Bill Emery has been playing music since he was 7 years old. Growing up in the Minneapolis Minnesota area he had a wide variety of influences from Lawrence Welk and all the musical entertainment on TV in the 1960’s to his older brother who was an accomplished accordionist and school and Army band musician. Before he was out of high school he was playing professionally. He played with a local dixieland band (Pig's Eye Computer and Jass Society) and a polka band (Lenny Flicek) that would travel around the state to places such as New Ulm and New Prague.

Bill self-taught himself to read music with an accordion and then played tuba through his school years, adding trombone after being inspired at a concert by Stan Kenton. He later attended the Stan Kenton Jazz Workshop in Springfield, Missouri and had his first composition played by the Kenton Orchestra.

Bill travelled with the John Stafford Big Band Sound and attended the University of Texas at Dallas and Cedar Valley College (Lancaster, TX) attaining degrees in Music Performance, Commercial Music, and Music Education. He has led his own groups since 1978 playing big band music and small group jazz. 

After arriving in Colorado Springs he formed the New Century Big Band as a community-focused group. He led this band until taking a “semi-retirement" to return to school to get a degree in nursing and he has worked as a RN in the stroke unit at a local hospital. 

Since returning from  "semi-retirement" he has led his own group, the Bill Emery Band (with 4-16 players), plays in the Bare Bones Trombone Choir, and is a founding member of PB&J (with Jim Robertson and Pam Steinberg). He released a jazz quintet CD titled “It Is What It Is: Songs for my Father and other Jazz” and has recently been recording a number of original songs.