Jerry Granelli UFB

Born Gerald John Granelli on 30 December 1940 in San Francisco, California, USA, he first took up drums in early childhood before pursuing formal studies that included lessons with Joe Morello. Throughout the early and mid-1960s he worked alongside a wide array of artists such as Vince Guaraldi, Denny Zeitlin, Jon Hendricks, Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines, Mose Allison, Ornette Coleman and Jimmy Witherspoon. The breadth of those associations shaped his exploratory approach, which carried forward into the following decade when he assembled groups of his own, among them Visions, and began teaching, initially in Denver and later in Seattle. During the 1970s he stepped away from jazz for several years to help establish the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, alongside Collin Walcott and Allen Ginsberg. Once back on the scene he performed abroad with musicians including Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner and cut sessions with vocalist Jay Clayton. He eventually made his home in Germany yet continued to teach in Halifax, Nova Scotia, while launching a recording career as a leader that featured both emerging German players and seasoned figures such as Jane Ira Bloom, Robben Ford, Bill Frisell and Julian Priester.

The varied sideman experiences of his formative years are audible in recordings that fuse elements of hard bop, free jazz, blues, jazz rock fusion, R&B and jazz funk. Within his ensembles Granelli functions primarily as a collective member, supplying colour, texture and atmosphere together with a pulse that remains supple yet anchored to the material his bandmates are playing. Toward the close of the 1990s he joined UFB with guitarists Kai Brückner and Christian Kögel plus bassist Andreas Walter. He also directed his own group Mr Lucky and currently fronts V16.