Lisa Pegher

Lisa Pegher is an American percussion soloist and drummer whose international career has helped redefine percussion as a solo art form within the orchestral world and beyond. She has dedicated her work to commissioning, premiering, and creating new repertoire that brings percussion to the front of the stage. She has been praised by The New York Times as “tremendous,” by The Boston Globe as “forcefully balletic,” and by The Glass as “more than just a drummer—an alchemist of time, sound, and space.”

Featured in Symphony Magazine as one of the top six performers of her generation, Lisa has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras and ensembles across the globe, including the Orchestre Symphonique de Trois-Rivières, Orchestre de Mulhouse, Thailand Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Reading Symphony, Symphoria, American Symphony Orchestra, NOVUS, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic, Nu Deco Orchestra, and many others. She has performed concerti and solo works by leading composers such as Jennifer Higdon, Joseph Schwantner, Mathew Rosenblum, Tobias Broström, James MacMillan, Kevin Puts, and Derek Bermel, and has collaborated with many of the world’s leading conductors, including Gil Rose, Larry Loh, Daniel Meyer, Timothy Muffitt, Marin Alsop, Mariusz Smolij, Bernhard Rubinstein, Roger Kalia, José-Luis Novo, Jacomo Bairos, and others.

A champion of new music, Lisa has given world premieres of numerous concertos and solo works written for her by a multitude of established and emerging composers. Notably, Mathew Rosenblum composed a full-length double percussion concerto for her and saxophonist Kenneth Koon (of the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet at the time), which she premiered with both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Thailand Philharmonic, and later recorded with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She has performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Perelman Performing Arts Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the DiMenna Center, NYC’s SubCulture, and other major venues worldwide.

Recently, she premiered Circuits and Skins, a percussion–EDM concerto written for her by Paul Dooley, hailed as “a wild throwdown pitting full-tilt rock-and-roll drums against muscle-flexing symphonic fury.” She also premiered Richard Danielpour’s percussion concerto The Wounded Healer, written for her, with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, where she was praised as “an ideal interpreter of the work.” The concerto has since been toured widely throughout the United States, Europe, and Canada. In 2023, she premiered Danielpour’s Tears of an Angel for vibraphone and strings at Schoenberg Hall in Los Angeles. In 2024, she performed in the inaugural season of Manhattan’s Perelman Performing Arts Center with NOVUS and gave the NYC world premiere of her collaborative show A.I.R.E with the ICEBERG Music Collective.

Beyond her concerto work, Lisa creates original multimedia projects that integrate amplified acoustic instruments, electronics, live animation, and software engineering. Her latest production, A.I.RE (Artificial Intelligence Rhythm Evolution), features ten commissioned works—including two of her own—and traces percussion’s evolution from ancient roots to its future alongside computers and AI. Her earlier multimedia projects include ImPerFecTion, developed with her Brooklyn-based SideFire Trio, and Minimal Art: Imaginary Windows.

A versatile cross-genre drummer, she has performed with numerous indie-rock, avant-jazz, and experimental ensembles and has recorded several works on the BMOP Sound label, including David Stock’s Concertos, Rosenblum’s Möbius Loop, and Paul Dooley’s Point Blank.

When not performing, Lisa enjoys long-distance running, biking, yoga, and computer programming. She endorses and is supported by Evans Drumheads, Marimba One (M1), Black Swamp Percussion, and Reverie Drums.