Christine Perry, Percussion
While on a recent visit to China, Chris visited a small percussion store and came home with about a hundred pounds of gongs and cymbals. She is one of only eight women percussionists in this country’s major orchestras, and she couldn’t have picked a more suitable specialty. “I love the variety of sound percussion affords, how you can change the sounds of an instrument by how you strike it, and the number of instruments you can play in one concert.”
Chris grew up in Whittier, California, and started on piano before switching to percussion. She was always tapping out rhythms, and her school band gave her a chance to do just that, highlighted by a march in the 1967 Pasadena Rose Parade. She entered Lewis & Clark College as an English major before graduating in Music Education, and while in town studied with the Oregon Symphony’s timpanist Paul Salvatore. She then studied with George Gaber at Indiana University before joining the Oregon Symphony in 1976.
Chris has played for Portland Opera and Portland Ballet, chamber groups, and festivals such as Peter Britt and Coos Bay. She is very involved in political and social issues and has done volunteer work for people with AIDS. She comments that she was very pleased to perform the Corigliano First Symphony, a musical memorial to victims of AIDS, especially because of her friendship with former Oregon Symphony Assistant principal violist Van Hodge, who died in 1989 of AIDS-related causes.
She likes reading, bird watching, and her two cats. She is a computer aficionado who follows the stock market and used to belong to a computer club named the Stock Bytes; her friends still tease her because she reads financial statements for fun.
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