Gianluca Pellerito was born in Palermo on May 1, 1994, and started on drums in early childhood; his father played drums as a hobby, and the records that pulled him in were Earth, Wind & Fire and Incognito. He also picked up some piano and guitar, but drums stayed the focus. He describes himself as largely self-taught, despite a few early teachers in Palermo. His first public concert came at age eight, at Umbria Jazz in 2002 with the Berklee summer-program band directed by Dave Clark, and he took a master class in Perugia with Christian Meyer. At nine he played a charity benefit at Palermo's Teatro Al Massimo, and in 2006-2007 he sat in as a special guest with the Italian group Dirotta su Cuba. A "Musician Revelation" award from the Castelbuono Jazz Festival followed in 2007.

His first concert as a bandleader was "Gianluca Pellerito and Orchestra" at the Golden Theatre in Palermo when he was 13, staged with the Brass Group Foundation's jazz orchestra of about 30 musicians and guests including John Pizzarelli, Rachelle Ferrell and Billy Childs. In July 2009 he played the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Avenue in New York, and that October he made his debut as a leader at Blue Note Milano, which his official biography bills as the youngest bandleader to play the club (it gives his age as 14). Around the same time he met the American drummer Peter Erskine, who invited him to open a concert. Erskine told the magazine Rhythm that the young Sicilian reminded him of himself at that age.

That friendship led to Three Drums Show, a world-premiere concert at Palermo's Teatro di Verdura on July 31, 2009, with three drum kits on stage: Erskine's, Alex Acuña's and Pellerito's, backed by the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana under conductor Domenico Riina. The three drummers wrote and arranged the new pieces themselves, and the Brass Group Foundation issued an 11-track live CD on The Brass Group Records. It is documented on his official site and in the Sicilian press, and it is not listed on Discogs.

The next years were busy with touring and invitations. At 16 the Kennedy family invited him to play at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. In 2011 he was a guest with the London acid-jazz band Incognito, and Incognito's leader Bluey Maunick called him again when the band played the Blue Note. In 2012 he and his quintet played a concert tied to the London Olympic Games, and in October of that year he was named an ambassador of Italian jazz in England. On December 28, 2012 that quintet recorded live at Umbria Jazz Winter in Orvieto; the result, Jazz My Way: Herbie Hancock Tribute (2013, Universal Classics & Jazz), presents eight tracks including "Watermelon Man," "Rockit," "Cantaloupe Island," "Maiden Voyage" and "Dolphin Dance," a program built on the music of Herbie Hancock. The cover names Ross Stanley, Michael Rosen, Paul Stacey and Alfredo Paixão beside the leader, and a preview of the program opened the 60th Umbria Jazz Summer in Perugia on July 5, 2013. In 2014 he toured the United States, with dates at the Highline Ballroom in New York and Blues Alley in Washington, and he has twice toured Brazil, including the Tudo Jazz Festival.

In 2015, at 21, he moved to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music, where he stayed about two and a half years and, by his own account, practiced eight to twelve hours a day. His teachers there were James Murphy, Terri Lyne Carrington and Ron Savage. On March 21, 2016 he led a quintet at the Blue Note in New York, the only Italian bandleader on the club's 2016 schedule, with guitarist Sheryl Bailey, bassist Marco Panascia, pianist Michael Eckroth and vocalist Karen Marie, according to the press announcements. His official biography lists Fabrizio Bosso, Francesco Cafiso and Franco Cerri among the many musicians he has played with; those names are not tied to specific recordings.

Now based in Milan, Pellerito has become known through a set of younger fusion projects. Since 2023 he has played with the Sicilian guitarist Matteo Mancuso. On Mancuso's debut The Journey (2023, The Players Club) he is the credited drummer on two tracks, "Falcon Flight" and "Samba Party," with Giuseppe Bruno on the rest, and on the follow-up Route 96 (2026, Music Theories Recordings and Mascot Label Group) he is the drummer on eight of the nine tracks, alongside bassist Riccardo Oliva and guests including Steve Vai on "Solar Wind." Oliva, also from Palermo, is his other regular partner: the two make up the duo Twins Not Twins and play in the trio of the keyboardist Julian "J3PO" Pollack, which has toured Europe since 2023 and released a run of singles in 2025. Their band Fool Arcana, with singer Cecilia Barra Caracciolo and pianist Fabio Visocchi, released Picaresque in 2022, and Pellerito is credited as a featured player on "Shibuya Meltdown" from Jack Gardiner's 2026 debut Kintsugi. In Jazz Journal's November 2025 profile, "Gianluca Pellerito, drum wunderkind," he was described as a 31-year-old drummer, and the piece notes that Drumeo named him its jazz drummer of 2024.

Pellerito plays fast, dense, independent-limbed modern fusion drums, and the groove-first side of Herbie Hancock's catalog is his home ground: his one album as a leader is a Hancock tribute, and the Mancuso trio work leans on jazz-rock and funk. He names Ronald Bruner Jr., Vinnie Colaiuta, Dennis Chambers, Dave Weckl, Chris Dave and Billy Cobham among his drum influences, and cites hip-hop, particularly J Dilla, as a love. He credits Erskine and Acuña for his early grounding in jazz and percussion, and says Berklee changed both his practice habits and his concept of the instrument. The Discogs style tags on his recordings run from Contemporary Jazz (Jazz My Way) to Fusion and Jazz-Rock (Mancuso, Fool Arcana), and he lists Kenny Garrett, Robert Glasper, Thundercat and Scott Kinsey among the artists he most wants to play with or admires.