Jerry Steinhilber

Jerry Steinhilber started to play percussion and mallet keyboards at age 12. Soon after, his interest in jazz awoke when he discovered Miles Davis' Milestones. He went on to study jazz in high school and at the Berklee School of Music. After about three years in Boston and disappointed by the education he received, he decided to work on cruise ships where he honed his bandleading skills and began to experiment while staying immersed in jazz. In the mid-'80s, he joined the rhythm section of a Manhattan Transfer-type outfit touring the casino/resort circuit. A couple of years later, after a short stint trying to play jazz in Santa Barbara, he moved to Phoenix where he performed Top 40 dance music that enabled him to perfect his timing playing along with drum machines and sequencers. In the early '90s, Steinhilber moved to Los Angeles where he dove back into his original love: jazz. There, he befriended Jeff Hamilton, played with Eric Marienthal, Pete Christlieb, and the Clayton Brothers, among others, and studied for two years the mechanics of the sticks with Murray Spivak. In the mid-'90s, the drummer moved to Chicago to focus on teaching and writing for ensembles. In the late '90s, he finally decided to work on his own music and spawned a project documented on Chicago Trio New York Tenor and involving saxophonist George Garzone, one of his former teachers at Berklee. A solid technician and a powerful drummer, Jerry Steinhilber is an artist with a genuine love for jazz and whose work is largely influenced by the music of John Coltrane.