Music has always been the passion and life of Mr. Jerry Ozipko, with research and writing being near seconds. A native Edmontonian, who began his musical career with violin lessons from the age of seven, his first major teacher of influence having been the late Ranald Shean, who was a pillar of violin instruction in Edmonton for many decades. Mr. Ozipko matured as an artist and following graduation from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Music degree in violin performance, where he studied with the late Thomas Rolston and the Hungarian String Quartet, he went on to continue studies at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri with William E. FitzSimmons, Yale University with the Yale String Quartet, and the Music Academy of the West, in Santa Barbara, California, where he studied with Berl Senofsky. Before choosing the career direction of music educator, he served as an orchestral musician in the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra for several years.
In 1972, Mr. Ozipko began performing experimental and avant-garde music in a variety of concerts by composers including Krzysztof Penderecki, Henk Badings, Otto Luening, John Cage, Andrzej Dobrowoilski, Morton Feldman, Steve Reich, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Anestis Logothetis and Karlheinz Stockhausen, to name only a few. He has been a dedicated champion of contemporary and experimental music ever since.

Mr. Ozipko has been a violin performer and teacher in and around Edmonton for over 40 years. He became a member of the faculty of Sherwood Park School of Music in March, 1997, and has been there ever since. Since 2004 he has revived his formal performing career with presentations of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, Strings and Continuo, BWV 1043 and Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, BWV 1041 with the Wye Chamber Orchestra. In 2008, Mr. Ozipko was invited to become a member of a multi-media, multidisciplinary performance group called Ensemble Mujirushi. The ensemble specializes in the performance of contemporary conceptual and graphic scores that more often than not resemble musically abstract illustrations or paintings.

During November of 2009, Ensemble Mujirushi was privileged to perform on a tour of Europe called Smash the Mainstream. Concerts were presented in Ghent, Belgium (November 18); in Kraków, Poland as part of their Audio Art Festival 2009 (November 21); in Warszawa, Poland at the prestigious Fryderyck Chopin University of Music as a presentation during the institution’s 200th Anniversary Celebrations (November 22); in Gdansk, Poland at the Stanislaw Moniuszko Academy of Music (November 23); in Lodz, Poland at the Galeria Manhattan as part of the Audio Arts Festival on Tour (November 25) and at the Grazyna and Kiejsut Bacewicz Academy of Music (November 26); and in Katowice, Poland at the Mieczyslaw Karlowicz Academy of Music (November 28). The tour was immensely successful and was followed by an equally successful Canadian tour in the fall of 2010. That tour included performances in Lethbridge, AB; Saskatoon, SK; Montréal, QE; Kitchener-Waterloo, ON; Thunder Bay, ON and Toronto, ON. Ensemble Mujirushi’s reputation was established and Jerry Ozipko was reinstated as a serious musician and performer.