William Berry

Trumpet and Brass Choir Instructor

Hall of Music 12

(509) 527-5770

Email: berrywb@whitman.edu

William Berry, winner of the 2003 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship for music, is a musician whose career encompasses every aspect of the field.  He has found success as a performer, composer, arranger, director, producer, writer, and educator.  Berry is a member of ASCAP and the American Music Center, the New York advocacy group for composers, and his compositions and arrangements have been commissioned and perfoormed by professonal ensembles throughout the country.

Berry has been a member of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra since 1988 and principal trumpet for the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra since 1997.  He has appeared as a soloist with the Spokane Symphony, the Walla Walla Symphony, the Northwest Bach Festival, the Mid-Columbia Symphony, Gonzaga Univerisity's Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, the Spokane Area Children's Chorus, and the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee. 

Berry has been an adjunct faculty member at Whitman College as a trumpet instructor since 2006.  Since 2004 he has been brass chamber coach and trumpet instructor at the Midsummer Musical Retreat, the nation's most comprehensive camp for adult amateur musicians.  He also teaches trumpet privately and has coached the brass, wind and string sections of various high school and college ensembles, including the Spokane Youth Symphony and weekly sessions with the Lewis & Clark High School trumpets since 1997.  Berry has authored and performed in many educational programs, including the Shoestring 4-tet program for the Spokane Symphony.  He was commissioned to create The SymFunny Paper, a music education newspaper for fifth-graders, and from 1996 to 2000 compiled and wrote these education materials. 

Berry received his Bachelor of Music Performance in Trumpet 1982 from Indiana University, where he studied with Louis Davidson, Allan Dean and Charles Gorham.