An award winning member of both, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and the Society of Composers, Inc., Brett L. Wery’s compositions have been performed and recorded around the world. Recently premiered works include Sonata for Four Guitars, String Quartet No. 1, Oot-kwa-tah for chamber orchestra and Quarry Songs for Soprano, Baritone, and Piano. In 2015, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra trumpeter Peter Bond performed Wery’s Three Conversations with Coffee on the International Trumpet Guild New Works Recital in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Wery’s suite for unaccompanied clarinet and looper, The Mpingo Parables will be performed at the 2021 International Clarinet Association’s annual conference. Wery’s 2013 String Quartet was the 2021 Grand Prize winner of the Classic Pure Vienna International Music Competition.

Brett L. Wery is an active composer/arranger in the Capital Region area of upstate New York. He is the Music Director/Conductor of the Capital Region Wind Ensemble in Schenectady, NY and composer/editor for Sonata Grendel Publishing in Scotia, NY. He was recently named Visiting Artist in Residence in Winds and Director of the Wind Ensemble at Williams College in Williamstown MA.For twenty-five years he taught theory, conducting, and applied woodwind studies at the State University of New York, Schenectady County Community College where he also directed the college wind ensemble. As a professor at SUNY Schenectady, Wery recieved the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the SCCC Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching. Wery later served as dean of the School of Music at SUNY Schenectady before retiring from academia to pursue composition and conducting full time. He is the Music Director/Conductor of the Capital Region Wind Ensemble in Schenectady, NY—a group of professional musicians that has premiered many of Wery’s works for wind ensemble and band. Wery was recently named Visiting Artist in Residence in Winds and Director of the Wind Ensemble at Williams College in Williamstown, MA.

 Brett L. Wery was born in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1963. He grew up in Cramerton, North Carolina, a small mill town in the Charlotte piedmont region of the state. He was a paper carrier for the Gastonia Gazette for ten years before leaving for college. He also worked for Carothers Funeral Home in Belmont North Carolina. Clarinet was Wery’s first instrument, which he started in the seventh grade. He soon picked up saxophone and flute as well as oboe and bassoon. In 1981 Wery graduated from South Point High School in Belmont, NC and moved to Winston Salem, NC to study clarinet at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

While at UNCSA, Wery studied with clarinetist, Robert Listokin. Wery attributes much of what he learned about musicianship and teaching to Listokin who was essentially a father figure to him. Wery eventually performed with his teacher in the Winston Salem Symphony. Wery went on to the University of Denver to study instrumental conducting with Joeseph Docksey and saxophone with Arthur Bouton. While in Denver Wery performed with the Cheyenne Symphony and the Colorado Springs Symphony.

After completing his Masters Degree, Brett L. Wery moved to New York City to play in the Westchester Broadway Theatre, New York’s longest running Actor’s Equity theater where he often doubled on as many as seven woodwind instruments. While based in New York, Wery also performed with National Touring Musicals, performing in forty-six different states in a two-year period.

In 1992 Wery moved to Schenectady, New York to begin his academic career at the State University of New York, Schenectady County Community College where he would eventually become Dean of the School of Music.

Wery is currently composing, conducting, and performing in Scotia, NY where he lives with his wife and amazing oboe player, Karen Hosmer and Eddie the cat.