TAFTO 2006 Contributor Bio – Jerry Bowles

Jerry Bowles is founder and editor of Sequenza21, the contemporary classical music portal, which was the recipient of the 2005 ASCAP Deems Taylor Internet Award. He is also a veteran writer, editor, publisher and blogger who has written about the arts, business, innovation and technology issues for such magazines as Forbes, Fortune, Esquire and Newsweek for more than 30 years.

Bowles is the author of two books on television history, Forever Hold Your Banner High and A Thousand Sundays. In addition to Sequenza21, he has designed, built and maintains three other web sites: The One-Minute Web Guide , and Best of the Blogs. He was born and grew up in southern West Virginia and is a graduate of Marshall University and West Virginia University. He lives in New York with his wife, Suzanne, and his cat, Howard.

Sequenza21.com is a web-based music portal dedicated to contemporary classical music, especially the music of living composers and performers. Organized as a series of web logs (or blogs), Sequenza21 provides coverage of new music news, reviews of live performances, CD and DVD reviews, a calendar of coming performances and a Composers Forum web log page where music creators gather to share ideas on composition as well as issues that affect the lives of working musicians. The forum is open to any professional or student composer who wants to participate.

Sequenza21 is also home to about 20 individual blogs maintained by composers, performers, and conductors as well as a self-service Wiki where anyone involved in contemporary classical music may post information about themselves and their work and even upload samples of their music for visitors to explore. The essence of Sequenza21 is community and the website has attracted a dedicated cadre of contributors and readers since switching to the web log format about a year ago.