Barry Martin Browner

Barry Martin Browner

June 2, 2024

Chapel Hill, North Carolina - Barry Martin Browner, beloved husband, father, grandfather, musician, and educator, passed away peacefully on June 2, 2024, at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was 90 years old.

Barry was born to Rose Pines and Irwin Browner in Flushing, New York, the youngest of three children. As a boy, he often went to the Polo Grounds with his father to see the Giants play football, and he remained a lifelong (and long-suffering) fan.

As a teenager, Barry spent his summers at Deerwood Adirondack Music Camp in Saranac Lake, New York, an experience that would shape his life and would lead to a career in music. While at Great Neck High School, he attended Saturday classes at The Juilliard School of Music in New York City and was subsequently offered a Juilliard trumpet scholarship, but instead decided to attend the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio.

During the Korean conflict, and midway through his Oberlin studies, Barry enlisted in the U.S. military, where he served as a musician in the Air Force Band, including playing for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Returning to Oberlin after his discharge, he spent his junior year abroad studying music at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria.

After earning his Bachelor of Music degree, Barry divided his career between teaching and professional musicianship. As an educator, he joined the faculty at Watchung Hills Regional High School in New Jersey as Chairman of the Music Department, simultaneously earning an M.A. in music education from Columbia University Teachers College. For the next three decades, he taught music at the Junior School in Madison, New Jersey, where he touched the lives of thousands of students. As a professional musician, Barry played with numerous symphonic orchestras as principal trumpet and was frequently a soloist, including performing the Haydn Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major with the New Jersey Colonial Symphony in 1981. He was a founding member of the Masterwork Brass Quintet and an original member of Solid Brass, a 10-piece brass ensemble that released three albums, performed on radio and television, and toured nationwide. In 1988, the group played at Alice Tully Hall at Manhattan's Lincoln Center in a performance the New York Times described as "virtuosic" and "unfailingly precise".

After retirement, Barry and his wife Linda moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he enthusiastically pursued his interests in golf, photography, and barbecue.

Barry is survived by Linda, his wife of 58 years, as well as children Jessica (Norwalk, CT) and Matthew (Cherry Hill, NJ), grandchildren Eren and Benjamin, and rescue dog Phoebe. The family expresses their special appreciation to Dr. Adam Goldstein for his care and compassion.

There will be no memorial service. Barry's wishes were for his ashes to be spread in Lake St. Catherine, Vermont, a magical place where he summered with his family in the 1930s and learned to swim. Anyone wishing to honor Barry's memory may make a donation to Orange County Animal Services (NC) or PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro.