Peter Erskine European Trio

In Analogy Records since:
July 2014

Peter Erskine

Peter Erskine has played drums since the age of 4 and is known for his versatility and love of working in different musical contexts. He appears on 600 albums and film scores, and has won 2 Grammy Awards plus an Honorary Doctorate from the Berklee School of Music. Fifty albums have been released under his own name or as co-leader. He has played with the Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson big bands, Weather Report, Steps Ahead, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Diana Krall, Kenny Wheeler, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Brecker Brothers, The Yellowjackets, Pat Metheny & Gary Burton, John Scofield, et al, and has appeared as a soloist with the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, plus the London, Los Angeles, Chicago, BBC Symphony, Oslo, Helsinki and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras.

He recently premiered Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Erskine — Concerto for Drumset & Orchestra” with the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, and performed it recently at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Peter has been voted ’Best Jazz Drummer of the Year’ ten times by the readers of Modern Drummer magazine. Peter graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and studied at Indiana University under George Gaber. Peter is an author with several books to his credit; his latest “No Beethoven” is an autobiography and chronicle of the band Weather Report. Peter is currently Professor of Practice & Director of Drumset Studies at USC, and conducts masterclasses worldwide, and his latest endeavors include several innovative play-along apps for iOS.

Rita Marcotulli

Rita Marcotulli studied piano at the Santa Cecilia Academy from a very early age. Initially attracted to Brazilian music, she turned towards Jazz at the age of twenty, and her career got off to a flying start. She had the chance to play with the ‘cream’ of jazz: Chet Baker, John Christensen, Palle Danielsson, Peter Erskine, Steve Grossman, Joe Henderson, Hélène La Barrière, Joe Lovano, Charlie Mariano, Tony Oxley, Michel Portal, Enrico Rava, Michel Bénita, Aldo Romano, Kenny Wheeler…

Her deeply intimate playing and her subtle arrangements emphasise every single note, amplifying its emotional charge. With Rita Marcotulli, Jazz fully reveals its capacity to almost physically pervade places as well as people’s body and soul, thereby creating an atmosphere that carries the audience away, into a world of feelings. “My music was obviously influenced by the work of a number of great artists: Thelonius Monk, Elis Regina, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, just to mention a few. However, besides the world of music, great influence was also exerted on me by so many other experiences, in the art, literature, visual art and, obviously, film sectors. In particular, I’ve always felt a great affinity between the poetic world that I try to express and that of one of the sharpest film-directors of all times, François Truffaut. Nostalgia for childhood, a vocation for flight, respect for timidity, the ambiguity of love, the sense of life going by, the struggle between innocence and experience are all notions that can be found throughout Truffaut’s work, and these same feelings often underlie the notes of my compositions and arrangements” – Rita Marcotulli.

Nils Paul “Palle” Danielsson

(born October 15, 1946) is a Swedish jazz double bassist born in Stockholm, Sweden, perhaps most notable for his work done with Keith Jarrett from 1974 to 1979, becoming a member of his European quartet for that period. Danielsson’s childhood was an especially musical one, his first instrument was the harmonica which he started playing at the age of two. By age eight he was playing violin, which he continued to play and study for roughly five years. Around this time he became interested in jazz music and started to play the double bass. By the time he was fifteen, Danielsson was playing professionally.

Having studied at the Stockholm Royal Academy of Music (1962–1966), he began to play with well-known Scandinavian musicians such as Eje Thelin, Bobo Stenson, Jan Garbarek and took up international collaborations, e.g. with Lee Konitz and Steve Kuhn. Over the years, Danielsson has worked with various acclaimed musicians, among them Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Kenny Wheeler, Geri Allen, Michel Petrucciani, Charles Lloyd, Peter Erskine, Elvin Jones, Ben Webster, Charlie Shavers, George Russell, Albert Mangelsdorff, Enrico Rava, Collin Walcott, Tomasz Stańko and John Taylor. He has also led and co-led several bands in Sweden, and has released several respective recordings as well.