William Berry received his Bachelor of Music Performance in Trumpet in 1982 from Indiana University, where he studied with Louis Davidson, Allan Dean and Charles Gorham. He has been principal trumpet for the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra since 1997 and from 1988 to 2012 was a member of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared as a soloist with the Spokane Symphony, the Walla Walla Symphony, the Mid-Columbia Symphony, Gonzaga University’s Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus on their 1998 British Isles Tour, and at the 1995 Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, the world’s largest traditional jazz festival.

William is founder and artistic director of Clarion, the 13-member brass choir, which has been performing since 1992. In 2000, Clarion recorded a popular compact disc entirely comprised of William’s Christmas and holiday arrangements, entitled Nutcracker Suite Dreams, and in 2003 released a second recording, Angels, a large-scale work for 2 choruses, brass, percussion, and organ. In 2005, William produced a third Clarion disc, A Partridge in a Pear Tree, which was a sequel to NSD. In 2006 he developed a flash animation electronic Christmas card featuring Clarion which attained near-instantaneous world-wide popularity over the internet. 2013 saw the release of another Clarion Brass holiday CD comprised entirely of William’s arrangements, entitled Reindeer Games.

As a member of the Seattle-based Emerald City Brass Quintet from 1983 to 1991, he performed on numerous concert series, television and radio broadcasts, and other venues from Alaska to Montana, including regular guest appearances at the Olympic Music Festival, and as finalist in the Concert Artist Guild Competition in New York.

Winner of the 2003 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship for music, William 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.

William has recently composed music for a musical theater version of Moby Dick, which was premiered in a production at Spokane Civic Theatre in April of 2019. This new work brought the epic tale with its legendary characters and human struggle to life, compressed into two and a half hours of powerful impact from the stage. At MMR, William has created original arrangements for the large brass ensemble every year, and arranged music for performance by both faculty and student ensembles.