John Barry Talley

The Naval Academy music program grew substantially under Talley's guidance. New ensembles were created that reflected an expanding interest in music and the changing demographics of the school. These included a symphony orchestra, a pipe and drum corps, a gospel choir and a women's glee club. Additions to the program included an annual spring oratorio, expanding the choral repertoire to include major works for chorus and orchestra such as Requiems by Verdi, Mozart, and Brahms, symphonies with chorus by Beethoven, Mahler, and Vaughan Williams and other major works such as Mendelssohn's Elijah and Haydn's Creation. In 1992 he established and acquired funding for The Distinguished Artists Series which brings performers of international stature to the Academy's Alumni Hall, performing for the Brigade of Midshipmen and the Annapolis community. During the final third of Dr. Talley's tenure, the Glee Club began to appear with major Symphony Orchestras as featured guest artists; these included the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, and Columbus Symphony, and the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra.

The schedule of the Naval Academy was demanding, and work on a doctoral degree was suspended for a few years but in 1983, Barry received the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from Peabody. His dissertation, Secular Music in Colonial Annapolis, 1745-56 was received with such enthusiasm by the scholarly community that it was subsequently published in book form by the University of Illinois Press as part of their acclaimed series, Music in American Life. Although the musical ensembles of the Naval Academy consumed the bulk of his time, Barry continued his involvement with colonial American music through lectures, performances, and restaging of historic musical events, from balls at the Maryland State House to ballad operas at St John's College, presentations for the Supreme Court Historical Society and the Library of Congress, Maryland 350 celebrations, US Constitution bicentennial events, and various symposiums concerned with eighteenth-century American Culture.

In 1971 he accepted a staff position at the U.S. Naval Academy as Assistant Director of Musical Activities with responsibilities as organist-choirmaster, director of the Academy's music theatre program, and Glee Club. The following year, Talley was promoted to Director of Musical Activities, a position he held for thirty-six years until his retirement in 2006.

Barry was an ardent believer in the value of professional leadership for the Academy's music program, expanding its staff of 2 in 1971 to its present size of 19, with highly trained leadership for the Drum & Bugle Corps, the Orchestra, Women's Glee Club and Gospel Choir, music theatre, full-time office staff, professional singers for its chapel program and a dedicated ticketing operation.

Barry next attended the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, holding successive fellowships in music theory, piano, and choral conducting. After earning his Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory in 1967, he began a doctoral program, completing course and residency requirements by 1971. His Baltimore teachers included Leo Mueller (orchestral conducting), Norman Johnson, Gregg Smith, Ray Robinson, and Theodore Morrison (choral conducting). While in Baltimore, Barry also held a number of professional positions including organist/choirmaster of several churches and serving as conductor of an oratorio society, a German singing society, two music theatre troupes, and choral programs in three private schools—Bryn Mawr, Boy's Latin, and Garrison Forest.

Talley grew up on a farm near Princeton, Kentucky. While attending high school, he studied piano at Bethel College and upon graduation, enrolled in the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1965 with a major in piano performance. For an additional year, he remained at Oberlin to complete a second major in choral conducting. His Oberlin teachers included Beryl Ladd and Joseph Schwartz (piano), Haskell Thomson (organ), and Hugh Johnson and Robert Fountain (choral conducting).

John Barry Talley (born July 22, 1943 ) was a musical director at the United States Naval Academy.