Jerry Pergolesi (ON) (2008–13)

Con­tact Con­tem­po­rary Music (of which I am co-artis­tic direc­tor) has been a mem­ber of the Cana­di­an New Music Net­work since its incep­tion, and an active mem­ber of the Toron­to Coali­tion of New Music Pre­sen­ters since our exis­tence as an orga­ni­za­tion. I have seen the results of coop­er­a­tive ven­tures mak­ing an impact on a local and nation­al lev­el. I wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute my ener­gy and enthu­si­asm to the Network”.

Jer­ry Per­gole­si is a found­ing mem­ber and co-artis­tic direc­tor of Con­tact Con­tem­po­rary Music. Jer­ry earned a Bach­e­lor of Music from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wind­sor where he stud­ied com­po­si­tion and advanced the­o­ry with Jens Han­son and per­cus­sion with Carl Har­ris. He received a Mas­ter of Music in Per­for­mance from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to where he stud­ied with Rus­sell Harten­berg­er. In addi­tion to spe­cial­iz­ing in con­tem­po­rary con­cert music, Jer­ry has stud­ied Mid­dle East­ern music and the­o­ry with George Sawa, African drum­ming and dance, Javanese Game­lan and per­forms with var­i­ous inde­pen­dent record­ing artists. As Con­tac­t’s per­cus­sion­ist, Jer­ry has com­mis­sioned and pre­miered works by Wende Bart­ley, John Burke, Alli­son Cameron, Theo Math­ien, Jor­dan Nobles, Deirdre Piper, Mar­ci Rabe and Ann Southam. Jer­ry gave the world pre­mier per­for­mance of Skin & Met­al, a music the­atre piece for per­cus­sion and dig­i­tal sound­tracks, writ­ten for and ded­i­cat­ed to him by Bar­ry Tru­ax. In July 2008, Jer­ry will be per­form­ing in the Bang On A Can Sum­mer Fes­ti­val with guest artist Ter­ry Riley. Jer­ry’s back­ground also includes admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions at Array­mu­sic, Arabesque Dance Com­pa­ny and Uni­ver­si­ty Set­tle­ment Music & Arts School.

www.contactcontemporarymusic.ca