Early in his career, Verdery was recognized in magazines such as
Classical Guitar,
Guitar Player and
Billboard among "a new breed of classical guitarists" and "advocates of new guitar music" stretching the instrument through inventive transcriptions, new compositions, and diverse influences, performance contexts and programs. In 2020,
Acoustic Guitar's Mark Small wrote, "Among the virtuosi of the Baby Boomer generation, it's not hard to make a case that Verdery has explored the most diverse terrain," noting a recorded repertoire that includes Bach,
Strauss and
Mozart, adventurous contemporary classical composers (including himself), arrangements of
Prince, traditional folk tunes and hymns, Eastern influences and "all manner of guitars."
Composing Verdery has composed works for classical and non-classical guitar for solo and duo performance, guitar quartets, chamber groups and orchestras, for himself and others, including
Sérgio and Odair Assad,
David Russell,
David Tanenbaum,
Scott Tennant, and John Williams and
John Etheridge. Verdery's compositions for larger guitar ensembles include: "Scenes from Ellis Island" (1999), a version of which (titled "Ellis Island") was written for and recorded by the
Los Angeles Guitar Quartet; "Pick and Roll" (for multiple guitars, saxophone, violin and basketball player), which premiered at Santa Cruz Contemporary Festival in 2000; and "Give" (for eight guitars), commissioned by Thomas Offermann and premiered in Rostock, Germany in 2009. The piece's title lifts a frequently used
Martin Luther King term, while the score is based on one of his speeches, with the cello loosely imitating the rhythms of his voice and the guitar imitating its pitch. His first two albums,
Bach: Transcriptions for Guitar (1983) and
Two Generations of Bach (1985), were noted for their fluent, intuitive playing and modern arrangements;
Guitar's
John W. Duarte described the former as "intensely musical, expressive but not archaically romantic, splendidly embellished, breathtaking in its sureness and cleanness in even the fastest passages." With two 1991 recordings, Verdery turned to contemporary American music.
Ride the Wind Horse (1991) featured a title piece by Newman, works by Lou Harrison, David Leisner and Roberto Sierra, arrangements of Hendrix's
Little Wing and
Purple Haze, and Verdery's own first recorded compositions.
Some Towns and Cities featured fifteen original Verdery compositions inspired by American cities, seen in terms of guitar—the product of Verdery's travels as a performer in the Affiliate Artist Program to factories, hospitals, schools and prisons, as well as concert halls. The album included the gospel-inflected guitar duet "What He Said"; "From
Aristotle", a work combining classical guitar, beatbox rhythms by Marc Martin imitating nature and singing, and spoken-word from the philosopher's
Poetics; and the atmospheric title track, featuring overdubbed guitars, cello, and African vocal improvisations.
Duo and ensemble recordings Verdery has recorded three album collaborations with other guitarists. In 2001, he and steel-string guitarist
William Coulter released
Songs for Our Ancestors, a wide-ranging album of traditional and ethnic melodies, including Irish
jigs, an Africa
mbira tune, a Tibetan chant and a
Shaker melody; their second,
Happy Here (2011), featured originals, traditional Irish and classical works, and rock songs.
The Enchanted Dawn (1998) offered a more varied global repertoire with works by
Biberian, Hand,
Janáček,
Michio Miyagi,
Piazzolla and
Shankar. Verdery also recorded in the ensemble, Ufonia—with Vicki Bodner (oboe), John Marshall (percussion), Harvie S. (bass) and Keith Underwood (flute)—releasing a self-titled EP (1994) and album (2002); they primarily feature his own compositions of guitar-directed chamber music borrowing from world cultures and employing rich sonic textures. In 2016, Verdery collaborated with rapper Billy Dean Thomas, creating four videos, including
Black Bach and
Hoochie Coochie Man. ==Teaching and other professional activities==