An independent piano teacher for many years, BRUCE BERR has also served on the faculties of numerous institutions, including Washington University in St. Louis and Roosevelt University in Chicago where he was coordinator of piano pedagogy for fourteen years. His articles on music and piano teaching have appeared in the major keyboard journals, and he is currently associate editor for Keyboard Companion magazine. In 2007, he will be launching a new tri-annual column in American Music Teacher magazine.

Dr. Berr is also a composer and arranger of educational piano music. His most recent publications are Expeditions in Style, Imaginations in Style and Explorations in Style, re-issued from the Expansions Series by Hal Leonard Publishing Corp. They also publish two books of Berr's arrangements of Chanukah and Passover holiday music, as well as several arrangements of patriotic duets for young pianists. Berr has served as a consultant, composer, and clinician for Hal Leonard's piano method series for children. Clavier magazine has featured his music in its "Commissioned by Clavier" pages. Berr also has several books of compositions with other publishers, including At the Seashore, Vols. I and II, by FJH Music Company; these volumes were on the Federation List for the past three years.

Berr frequently travels to present workshops and master classes throughout the country. He has done presentations for the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, and many attended his video presentation at the 2001 MTNA National Convention in Washington, DC. In 2003 he was a demonstration teacher for the MTNA Convention in Salt Lake City, and for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy in the Chicago area.

Bruce Berr received his degrees in piano and pedagogy from Washington University and Northwestern University. He also studied in New York with Etsko Tazaki, Jonathan Feldman, and Edna Golandsky. His pedagogy teachers have included Frank Murphy, Frances Larimer, Marcia Bosits, and Elvina Pearce. As a young child, his first piano teacher was Thelma Mildé.

Berr's hobbies include watching movies and old sitcoms on TV, listening to world-band radio on shortwave and the internet, and participating in ham radio. He holds a General Class amateur radio license and is heard on the international ham bands as W9KBR. Bruce Berr and his wife, Jennifer Merry, live in Glenview, Illinois with their dog Frango, and their cats Tiger and Seiko. Despite being a rational person in most other situations, inexplicably, he is still a Chicago Cubs fan.

Bruce can be reached via e-mail at