Quinby Berry: Enjoying the Harmony that Music Brings

Berry's musical journey began long before high school. “I’ve been singing my whole life,” he says, noting that he began to take it seriously in fifth grade when he joined a choir outside of school. From his childhood, he grew up with parents who are talented singers, having an inclination for musicality. Nonetheless, Berry still recalls feeling uncertain about his voice. Singing as a soprano, he lacked confidence in his singing. One his voice dropped, “I found my stride.” 

As a sophomore, Berry was selected for the Connecticut Music Educators Association Regional Festival. In his junior year, he made it two levels past regionals to All-Easterns where he was selected as one of only two Connecticut singers to sing Tenor 1 alongside top vocalists from across the east coast of the United States.

Despite listening to a wide range of music, from choral repertoire to classic rock, Berry identifies his greatest musical influence as personal. “My dad,” he says simply, when asked about his favorite tenor. “He’s who I look up to.” For pleasure, he listens to Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” on repeat. When performing, Berry gravitates towards choral music like “There Shall a Star from Jacob Come Forth" written by Mendelssohn or “And I Saw a New Heaven” by Bainton. 

With a great musical background integral to his experience, Berry encourages Hopkins students interested in singing, to look for opportunities to perform. He advises singers to believe “you have a great voice,” consequently not “limiting [yourselves]” to your mindset.  He reminds people to take risks and perform for others, noting that feedback is “how it starts.” As a veteran of the Hopkins choir program, Berry recognizes that Hopkins “gives you many opportunities to find what you want to do in singing.” 

Although Berry finds it difficult to pick one favorite memory from his time at Hopkins related to music, he describes his work with the Harmonaires as “really awesome,” especially when bringing together pieces that nobody had seen before and sounding good together at the end of a few rehearsals. As a head of the group, he contributes by making his own arrangements by "[identifying] the chords, and then the notes in each chord." For some arrangements, Berry would "make the basses (the lowest voices) sing a low F, the baritones (the next voice up) sing a C, and the tenor ones (the highest voices in our group) sing a high F, completing the chord and doubling the basses on the same note an octave higher." At the end, he would "go back and add some notes in between the chords, so that the song doesn't just sound hollow and boring. Finally, [he] would go back and listen to the melody, or what the singer in the song sings, and write that part above all the others as a solo line." It's a complicated process but as Berry puts it: "A huge part of a cappella singing is the arrangement. It's not just about singing a song; it's about deciding how to distribute the musical material across voices so that each part contributes something essential."

It seems that these harmonies carry over into his daily life too; when asked if he sings in the shower, Berry does not hesitate: “Of course.”