Bruce Nehring

   Founder-Artistic Director of the Consort, has been making music in El Paso for over thirty years. While seeking to encourage the development of the finest in local musical resources, he has continued to bring exciting guest artists and groups from across the United States and throughout the world to the Southwest.

Founder of El Paso Pro-Musica, he served as its Artistic director and conductor for fifteen seasons. During that time he developed the largest following for choral and chamber music in the area, introducing El Paso audiences to choral masterpieces and giving young performers such as nineteen year-old Stephen Prutsman early recognition. Innovations such as the use of the Union Depot and bringing of the first Chamber Music Festival over strong board objections are among his successes during his tenure with El Paso Pro-Musica. Such innovative programming brought recognition to El Paso, and his world-wide networking and international tours developed into lasting friendships for our Musicians with colleagues from Mexico to Canada, and from Europe to Australia.

Nehring's musical background is varied and extensive. A graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, he has done additional study in conducting and organ performance at Northwestern, Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, Oklahoma, and Oregon Universities. He was selected to study with Helmuth Rilling for two summers at the Oregon Bach Festival and was associated with the Aspen Music Festival for four seasons, studying under Dr. Fiora Contino, Dr. Margaret Hillis, Dr. Robert Fountain. Other teachers have included Dr. Lloyd Pfautch, and Dr. B. R. Henson.

He was organist/associate music director at Lovers Lane Methodist Church in Dallas for eight years, organist/director of music at First Pres­byterian Church, El Paso for ten years; director of the El Paso Boy Choir for three seasons; and founder/director of the El Paso Choir of the Southwest and El Paso Pro-Musica. He has served as organist/director of music for Ascension Lutheran Church, and as organist for the University Presbyterian Church.

He served the National Endowment for the Arts as a review panelist for choral grants for three years and is a frequent clinician/adjudicator for choral music, church music, and organ. He has served as conductor/clinician for the El Paso Independent School District honor choirs, and is a noted organ performer. His choirs have received universal acclaim in tours to Europe, 1974, 1976; the Northwest, Vancouver, and Victoria, B.C., including three performances at EXPO '86; Australia, New Zealand, 1988; and Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, 1992. Additionally, there have been concerts in Chihuahua, Mexico; various communities in New Mexico (Las Cruces, Ruidoso, Cloudcroft, the Mescalero Apache Reservation, Los Alamos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque); and Midland, Texas.

Professionally he is a member of the American Choral Directors Association (Life), Chorus America, and the American Guild of Organists. He represents Ruffatti Pipe Organs, Rodgers Organs and continues to serve as a consultant in church acoustics and pipe organ design. In addition, he has worked with the Presbyterian Association of Musicians and serves as director of the Loretto Academy Chamber Choir.
 

THE BRUCE NEHRING CONSORT
 

Bruce Nehring Consort had its beginnings in 1967 when Nehring arrived in El Paso to join the staff of the First Presbyterian Church as Organist/Director of Music. In addition to the usual church music groups, Nehring soon developed a large program involving singers and instrumentalists from area high schools. As this group of young people matured musically, he determined to take the El Paso Choir of the Southwest on a musical tour of Europe, something that "couldn't be done" as he was told repeatedly. There developed two tours in Europe, in 1974 and 1976, convincing him that an impossibility just takes a little longer to achieve.

Since then, Nehring has continued to achieve the impossible. The group of young singers who organized for the summer became an adult ensemble of singers ready to perform a season of concerts year round. Thus was El Paso Pro-Musica born, whose first concert was a presentation of MESSIAH in St. Christopher's Episcopal Church. That first audience felt that efforts to locate the church hidden in the Lower Valley were well rewarded. Although not easily found, that church had been chosen because it validated Nehring's belief that music should be presented in the setting that best enhances it, a true marriage of ar­chitecture to sound.

Therefore, many of Pro-Musica's concerts were held in churches, in different areas of El Paso in spite of some objections to attending concert in a church setting. What these critics did not realize was that much of the great choral literature was originally written for the church; so what better setting for the performance of such music is there than a church. Secondly, there is a lack in most communities of suitable performance spaces which have both good acoustics and sufficient space to accommodate both singers and instrumentalists except for church auditoriums. Lastly, because Nehring believed that music should be performed in a space that enhances its performance, only those places designed to do this should be used, and these places very often are churches.

This belief in architectural proportions to musical sound piqued Nehring's interest in using spaces not usually thought of as concert halls which led to his use of the Union Depot for concerts. The now very popular Union Depot Concerts were conceptualized in music and movement fully two years before the doors first opened on the original Depot Christmas concert over strong objections of the board. The success of the concerts has proven Nehring's philosophy that a concert must fit its setting, and choral music is not just three rows of singers on a set of risers.

After fifteen seasons and over 650 rehearsals and performances, Nehring and the El Paso Pro-Musica Board disagreed over governance and artistic control and dissolved their association. This enabled him to start this present organization, The Bruce Nehring Consort, El Paso's Professional Singers and Chamber Players. For thirteen seasons this group has continued in the tradition of performing the finest music in the manner that El Paso audiences have come to expect of a Nehring ensemble. He still presents to El Paso the masterworks of the centuries gloriously realized by the singers and players of the Consort. He still pursues the proper marriage of sound to setting, most recently found in the architectural gem of the Chapel at Loretto, where truly in our music God is glorified. We hope our performances in this our fourteenth season will leave a song in your heart and a spring in your footstep.

Through the Continuing Support of
DAMON GARBERN