Charles Roland Berry
Charles Roland Berry (born 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American composer. He studied music history and music compostition at the University of California with and Peter Racine Fricker.
Mr. Fricker tought him the intricate details of serialist music, and to discipline his musical imagination. He was not the best of students; due to his enthusiastic attitude and very short attention span.
In 1982, he met Paul Creston in San diago California, he studied composition with him for one year. Creston was a very celebrated composer, During the 1950's and early 1960's he was the most performed American Symphonic composer--as well-known to audiences as Copland, Barber, and Menotti. However his career was soon eclipsed by new, younger musicians.
For a time, he hosted a Classical radio program on KBOO, community radio, in Portland, Oregon. HGe would host telephone interviews with famous composers. Some of these people included; Benjamin Lees, John Cage, George Crumb, George Rochberg, Ned Rorem, Karel Husa, and William Schuman. Berry edited the interviews to make them a half-hour in length, often times adding excerpts of the particular composers music.
In Santa Cruz, California, he became auainted with the Hungarian cellist, composer, and former conductor for the Honolulu Symphony, George Barati.
In the 1990s he presented performances of his music in San Francisco with George Barati, Lou Harrison, and an electronic composer, Charles Amirkanian.