O Risen Christ, Still Wounded

For mixed choir and organ.

Concert organist Bruce Neswick is one of America's major talents in the field of organ performance and is especially noted for his superb ability as an improvisateur, a craft which only a few organists in the United States have made their specialty. His playing is widely recognized for its incisiveness, vitality and expressiveness.

His refined skill at improvisation has won him three first prizes -- from the 1989 San Anselmo Organ Festival, the 1990 Boston American Guild of Organists' national convention and the 1992 Rochette Concours at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland. His compact disk recording, on the Raven label (available from Towerhill-Recordings), features an improvised organ suite.

Mr. Neswick is the newly appointed Director of Music at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. He was formerly the Organist and Choirmaster of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta for many years. Prior to his appointment in Atlanta, he was the Assistant Organist-Choirmaster and Director of the Cathedral Girls' Choir at the Washington National Cathedral as well as the Director of Music at St. Albans School for boys and the National Cathedral School for Girls. These appointments followed tenures as Organist and Choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky, Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Geneva, Switzerland and St. Paul's Cathedral in Buffalo, New York. He is very active in the field of church music and is in great demand as a choral clinician with the Royal School of Church Music, for whom he has conducted several courses for boy and girl choristers. He has served on the faculties of several church music conferences and in the summer if 1997 will teach at the Master Schola in Massachusetts, Westminster Choir College Summer Session, the Montreat Conference and the regional convention of the American Guild of Organists held in Birmingham, Alabama.

He has composed for several performers and churches throughout the United States, and his organ and choral music is published by Paraclete, Augsburg-Fortress, Selah, Vivace, Plymouth and St. James' presses. A great deal of his service music, hymns and hymn-arrangements appear in hymnals found in churches of many denominations.

Mr. Neswick graduated from the Pacific Lutheran University in his native Washington state and from the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music. His teachers have included Robert Baker, David Dahl, Gerre Hancock, Margaret Irwin-Brandon and Lionel Rogg.

A Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, Mr. Neswick has served the Guild in many capacities, including chapter dean, regional education coordinator, member of the national nominating committee and member of the national improvisation competition committee.

As a recitalist, Mr. Neswick has performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe and has been a featured performer at national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. In July, 1994, he played the opening convocation for the national AGO convention held in Dallas, Texas, and he was a featured artist at the 2000 national convention in Seattle.