Bernard Wright was born on November 16, 1963, in Jamaica, Queens, and grew up inside one of the most productive neighborhood music scenes of the era. His godmother was the singer Roberta Flack. AllMusic's biography has him at the keyboard from the age of five and playing with the Junior Firebolts, a youth band that opened for the neighborhood's older Firebolts, before he turned ten. He studied at New York's High School of Performing Arts, and two Jamaica natives shaped his playing early: the keyboardists Weldon Irvine and Don Blackman, both of whom mixed jazz with funk, and the drummer Lenny White, who offered him a touring slot when he was 12. At 16 he was playing with the trumpeter Tom Browne.

His first session credits came in 1979, on Taana Gardner's self-titled disco-funk album and on Browne's GRP debut Browne Sugar. The next year's Love Approach (GRP, 1980) carried the record that put the whole circle on the radio, "Funkin' for Jamaica (N.Y.)," a number one R&B hit on which Wright is credited with Prophet synthesizer and electric piano; he also plays electric piano on "Her Silent Smile" and acoustic piano on "Martha." Marcus Miller was among the Jamaica players on those Browne sessions. Wright was heard on albums by Charles Earland and Crown Heights Affair the same year.

GRP signed Wright as a leader in 1981, and he made his debut at 17 with 'Nard, produced by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen and issued on Arista/GRP. It is a jazz-funk record with a touch of hip-hop, and it reaches into straight-ahead territory with a version of Miles Davis's "Solar" on which Roy Haynes and Buster Williams play. Patti Austin and Luther Vandross sing backing vocals on "Music Is the Key," and Grusin is in effect the date's second keyboardist. The album reached No. 23 on the Billboard R&B chart; "Just Chillin' Out" reached No. 33 and "Haboglabotribin'" No. 78 on the R&B singles chart. Tracks from 'Nard were later sampled in hits by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Skee-Lo and LL Cool J, and the album was reissued in 2001.

Funky Beat (Arista, 1983) was more mechanized. Wright and Lenny White produced the first three tracks, including the title song, which reached No. 39 on the R&B chart; Grusin and Rosen produced the rest, among them the ballad "Won't You Let Me Love You," which Wright wrote with Weldon Irvine and which reached No. 88 on the R&B chart, and a reading of Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring." He then moved to Manhattan Records, where Mr. Wright (1985), produced by Lenny White and Marcus Miller, was his commercial peak. "Who Do You Love," with Marla Adler as the female vocalist, reached No. 6 on the R&B chart, and its video was used in the title sequence of Video Music Box; the follow-up "After You" reached No. 23. AllMusic describes the album as a funk-forward R&B record in the realm of Prince and Cameo, and it was his last secular solo LP.

By the end of the 1980s he was a busy sideman and featured player. On Davis's Tutu (Warner Bros., 1986), arranged and largely played by Marcus Miller, Wright is credited with additional synthesizers on "Tomaas" and "Don't Lose Your Mind." He was a member of the Jamaica Boys, the funk group built around Miller and White, and appears on recordings by David Sanborn, Chaka Khan, Cameo, Doug E. Fresh, Pieces of a Dream and Bobby Brown, among others.

At the start of the 1990s he turned to contemporary gospel and made three albums for the Frontline label: Fresh Hymns (1990), Brand New Gospel Format (1991) and Fresh Hymns II (1992). His session work through the decade ranged from the guitarist Stanley Jordan and the keyboardist Alex Bugnon to the gospel acts Commissioned and Vickie Winans, and AllMusic notes that he also worked as musical director for Roberta Flack. In 1997 he was featured on Sadao Watanabe's Go Straight Ahead 'N Make a Left (Verve), playing piano and keyboards alongside bassist Steve Teele and drummers Charley Drayton and Mike and Hassan Flythe.

Wright moved to Dallas, his wife's hometown, during the 1990s. Around the turn of the century he formed a trio with Alfredo Elias and Damon Banks and released the album Back to Our Roots. He kept playing in the region and mentored younger musicians there, among them the band Snarky Puppy before its breakthrough; the band's founder, Michael League, spent his early Dallas years under Wright's informal mentorship, and he recorded with Roy Hargrove's RH Factor (Hard Groove, Verve, 2003), with Marcus Miller and with the Freddie Jones Jazz Group.

Bernard Wright passed away on May 19, 2022, at the age of 58, after being struck by a car while crossing a street in Dallas. He had been married to Anita Wright for nearly 40 years, and is survived by his children Bernard Jr., Christopher and Victoria.

Wright thought of jazz-funk as a hybrid of two equally valid art forms rather than a compromise between them, and his records bear that out. The pop-facing side is stated plainly: his chart hits were R&B singles, his best-known record is a mid-tempo R&B jam, and his later solo albums were gospel. The jazz side is just as concrete. He learned under Weldon Irvine and Don Blackman, toured with Lenny White at 12, recorded Miles Davis's "Solar" and Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring" on his own albums, played acoustic piano as well as synthesizers and electric piano, and was hired for Davis's Tutu, a Sadao Watanabe jazz date and Roy Hargrove's RH Factor.

On "Funkin' for Jamaica (N.Y.)" he supplied the synthesized bass line as well as the electric piano, and that keyboard-bass approach carried into his own records. The sound outlived the era in an unexpected place: 'Nard became a sample source for hip-hop producers over the following decades. AllMusic lists his styles as Jazz-Funk, Crossover Jazz, Fusion, Post-Bop and Contemporary R&B, a spread that matches a career spent moving between studios, bandstands and church.