Biography

Barry K. Cooper was born in Jacksonville, FL in 1981 to Barry and Terry Cooper. As his time in high school progressed, he would find out more and more about jazz and music in general, Shortly after graduating from high school (2000) he would move to New York to attend the New School University and study with the jazz masters. About three months into the program Benny Powell accepted Barry as his student and began to mentor him. This was the most valuable training any young trombone player could receive, to study under a jazz master. Soon after meeting Benny, Barry’s career would start to blossom, first a two month tour with the Duke Ellington Band featuring Lee Ann Wolmac (Country Western Music Singer of the Year 2001), Sunday nights at Birdland with Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Orchestra, and many other performances with others bands around New York city.

Clark Terry was also very helpful to Barry, telling him lots of stories about the history of jazz and invaluable information about playing jazz. Soon Clark, put together a very young band called The Young Titans of Jazz and invited Barry to record one CD in Bern Switzerland (his first European tour) and a DVD live at Birdland in New York City 6 months later. While on tour with Clark in Switzerland, Barry met the members of the Count Basie Orchestra who were also on tour. Impressed with his personality and playing, he would be invited to do a three-month tour starting in the States and finishing in Japan.

The tour with Count Basie Orchestra would be a monumental opportunity, consequently he was asked to join the band as a fulltime member at the end of the tour(2003). Since then, Barry’s career has taken off, performing all over the world playing concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City and Bunkyo Civic Hall in Japan. He has played with Tony Benett, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Liz Wright, Dianne Schure, Manhattan Transfer, New York Voices, Jon Hendricks, and the Charles Tolliver Orchestra to name a few.