Dr. Joseph Gray

Brass Team

Dr. Joseph Gray is the Associate Director of Bands and trumpet instructor at the University of North Alabama. Starting in Fall 2025, Dr. Gray will become the trumpet professor at Mississippi State University. Before coming to UNA, he served on the music faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and as a noncommissioned officer and senior instrumentalist with the U.S. Army Music Program. During his military service, Dr. Gray was a member of the Army Material Command Band at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, and the Maneuver Center of Excellence Band at Fort Moore, Georgia.

Dr. Gray is principal trumpet with the Shoals Symphony Orchestra and performs regularly with the Alabama, Huntsville, and Chattanooga Symphony Orchestras. He has performed with numerous orchestras across the country, including the New Mexico and Madison Symphony Orchestras, and held the position of Principal Trumpet with Opera Southwest in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Some of Dr. Gray’s recordings can be heard on the Beauport Press and Naxos labels and his performances have been featured on the nationally syndicated radio program “Performance Today”.

He has been involved in the drum corps activity for 30 years. As a performer, he was a member of the Velvet Knights and Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps. As an educator, he has served as the brass caption head of Esperanza Drum and Bugle Corps and as an educational staff member for the Academy and Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps.

Dr. Gray completed his DMA in trumpet performance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music where he was a recipient of the Eugene M. Bolz Fellowship. Dr. Gray completed his Master of Music at the University of New Mexico and his Bachelor of Music at the California State University, Long Beach.  

He currently resides in Florence, Alabama with his beautiful wife, Michelle, and their three children, Mia, Emmet, and Abigail. Dr. Gray is a vintage motorcycle enthusiast and avid home coffee roaster.