William Perry

William P. Perry is an American composer and television producer. Born in Elmira, New York in 1930, he attended Harvard University and studied with Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston and Randall Thompson. His music has been performed by the Chicago Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and the symphonic orchestras of Minnesota, Montreal and Hartford as well as the Vienna Symphony, the Rome Philharmonic, the Slovak Philharmonic, the National Symphony of Ireland and other orchestras in Europe.

For twelve years, Perry was the music director and composer-in-residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he composed and performed as a pianist more than three hundred scores for the Museum's silent film collection. His subsequent PBS television series, "The Silent Years" (1971,1975) presented by Orson Welles and Lillian Gish, won an Emmy Award. Perry is often credited with having played a major role in the revival of interest in classic silent films.


William P. PerryFor three years (1976-1978) he produced a poetry series for PBS called "Anyone for Tennyson?" starring Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Claire Bloom, William Shatner and Vincent Price among others. He later developed and produced the four-part DVD series, "The Poetry Hall of Fame", which he also hosted.

He was executive producer and composed the scores for the Peabody Award-winning "Mark Twain Series" of feature films on PBS (1980-1985), and his Broadway musical, "Wind in the Willows", starring Nathan Lane, won him Tony nominations for both music and lyrics (1986).

Perry's dramatizations of the works of Mark Twain have included a staged musical biography, "Mark Twain: The Musical", that ran for ten summers (1987-1995) in Elmira, NY and Hartford, CT. LML Music recently issued a CD of the complete original cast recording.

His most prominent symphonic compositions include the Jamestown Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (2007), written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent colony in America in Jamestown, Virginia. It was released on CD by Naxos Records with Yehuda Hanani as soloist and the RT? National Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Eddins. An upcoming Naxos recording called "The Silent Years" will include his Three Rhapsodies for Piano and Orchestra, the Gemini Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra, and the suite, Six Title Themes in Search of a Movie.

William Perry's music can also be found on the Opus, Premier, and Bridge labels. It is published by Trobriand Music Company.

Perry's background includes directorial and production experience in the formative years of television, writing script material for Lux Video Theatre and working with Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason and other entertainment icons. He directed the first color commercial to be broadcast live coast-to-coast and the first musical commercial ever produced and broadcast on videotape.

In addition to his film and musical work, William Perry has maintained a separate business life. In 2000, he and his wife, Marina Perry, founded Right Face Ltd., a skin care company distributing products throughout the world under the brand name Rosacea Care. Their company now has the world's largest and most comprehensive line of skin care products for rosacea and sensitive skin.