OP ERA A F IC IONADO
Q&A
with Mary
Watson-Bruce
Mary Watson-Bruce, Ph.D. social sciences ’82, has an extensive history with UCI. She served as the associate director of geriatric medicine at UCI for ten years, and her late husband, Dickson Bruce, was a professor of history for over four decades. A lifelong music lover, Watson-Bruce is the founding chair of the UCI Opera Guild, and a member of the CTSA Dean’s Arts Board. She is also a founding member of the OC Women’s Chorus, an ambassador for the Irvine Barclay Theatre, and a season ticket holder for the Long Beach Opera and LA Opera.
Q. When did your love of singing start, and how have you nurtured it over time? MWB: I was born into it. My great grandfather was an enslaved man who made
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and played his own fiddles (violins) for the pleasure of his enslavers. At the end of enslavement, he destroyed every one of them, because playing them brought him no joy. My grandmother, his daughter, could play piano by ear, and I was taught piano at an early age. My mother was a singer and often a soloist in church choirs. One of her brothers played with Lightnin’ Hopkins’ blues band. My grandmother had a wind-up Victrola record player and we would play blues, opera, jazz and contemporary music. I’m 75, so my life spans a large part of what music in America is.
