William P. Perry

William P. Perry (born 1930 in Elmira, New York) is an American composer and producer of television and film. His music has been performed by the Chicago Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and the symphonic orchestras of Cincinnati, Minnesota, Montreal, Calgary and Hartford as well as the Vienna Symphony, the Rome Philharmonic, the Slovak Philharmonic, the RTÉ National Symphony of Ireland and other orchestras in Europe. Biography Born in Elmira, New York in 1930, he attended Harvard University and studied with Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston, and Randall Thompson. 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 two hundred scores for the Museum’s silent film collection. TV work After working at MOMA, he produced a PBS television series, The Silent Years (1971, 1975) hosted by Orson Welles and Lillian Gish, which won an Emmy Award. Perry is often credited with having played a major role in the revival of interest in classic silent films. For three years (1976–1978) he produced a national poetry series for PBS, Anyone for Tennyson, starring Henr