Bio

Diane Berry grew up in Toronto, starting piano lessons at age six and flute at 13.  She graduated from the music program at York University in 1982 and moved to Halifax to teach and play chamber music.  Since then she has lived in Sidney, B.C.; Suva, Fiji and Smithers, B.C., continuing to teach and perform in all three locations. In 1995, after moving to Smithers, she became a founding member of the trio, Two Flutes & a Violin, who continue to play together, performing across the north and in Victoria. While working with the trio she also returned to composition,  beginning with music for the trio.

She later branched out with works with other instrumentations including two string quartets, a 'Gloria' written for the Victoria Piano Summer School chorus, a piece for Prelude Strings (a city-wide middle school string orchestra), three works for the Smithers community band, music for three slideshows (involving the work of photographer Myron Kozak) and for the documentary “Sheep of Stone”.  In The Pine Cycle (for five voices and piano) and Walking Poems (for SATB, clarinet, and cello) she worked with British Columbia poet, Sheila Peters.

Some of her piano music for students can be found in Mayfair Music's Northern Lights Series and in Contemporary Styles and she has works published with Avondale Press. In 2011 her piece A Northern Winter's Night received an honorable mention in the International Association of Women in Music's Search for New Music and was premiered at Vancouver's Sonic Boom in 2013. She has had works performed by the Erato Ensemble, the Turning Point Ensemble, SOCCO string quartet in Seattle, flutist Mark McGregor, Kamloops Chamber players, and many local Victoria performers.

In 2016, her piece for string quartet, Chasing the Raven was awarded second prize in the Seattle Composers Alliance call for scores. In 2016, her piece Ephemeral was featured in the Hugh Davidson Readings by the  Victoria Symphony, and the Jean Coulthard Readings by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. She has been an adjudicator for the composition class in the Greater Victoria Performing Arts Festival four times, and once for the Registered Music Teacher's Murray Adaskin Competition.

She is a registered music teacher, an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and a member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers, the International Association for Women in Music, and the Canadian League of Composers.