Peter Kronreif

Born and raised in Salzburg, Austria, Peter Kronreif discovered his passion for the drum set already in early childhood - “I went to the kitchen, chose cooking spoons, pots and pans and whatever sounded nice to me and enthusiastically accompanied the mozart sonatas my big brother and my mother were playing on recorder and piano.” He picked the drums at age nine and soon started playing in his father's wind orchestra. In high school Peter got into his first bands playing rock, funk and pop music. “We used to plug our ears and go crazy on Offspring and Greenday songs in the bunker under my dad’s school”. Inspired by his brother Chris' records (who is a jazz saxophonist living in Vienna) and his early teachers Christian Lettner and Franz Trattner, Peter started to get into jazz – transcribing Roy Haynes and Elvin Jones, forming jazz bands with schoolmates and playing weekly jazz sessions at a local bar in Salzburg - his first steps on what proved to be a long road.

After graduating high school Peter went to Graz to study jazz at the University of Arts with Alex Deutsch, but only for one semester. He then transferred to the Bruckner University Linz, where he completed his Bachelor’s Degree of Arts in 2007 with first class-honors, studying with Doug Hammond and later, in the master's program, with Jeff Boudreaux. “I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet and study with these awesome drummers and great humans; and I would definitely not be where I am today without their inspiration and guidance.”

Between 2005 and 2010 Peter Kronreif spent most of his time in Vienna, Austria, and became a most-wanted sideman in Austria’s jazz-scene. Working with, amongst others, Harry Sokal, Martin Reiter, Matthieu Michel, Alegre Correa, Bastian Stein, Ana Paola DaSilva, Peter O'Mara, Fabian Rucker, Pepe Auer and Phil Nykrin brought him on tour in over 20 nations – and in 2010 he was awarded the Hans-Koller-Prize as “Sideman of the Year 2009“. He too was granted the "Annual Scholarship for Music 2010" by the city of Salzburg as well as a studying grant from the Ministry of Arts & Culture.

Over the years he started visiting New York City for a few months each year – wanting to hear his idols play, to get inspired by the scene and to be able to study with drummers like Greg Hutchinson, Jonathan Blake and John Riley.

In 2010 Peter was granted an Artist Visa and moved to the Big Apple, to Brooklyn, where he currently lives and works if he is not on tour with one of the many projects and artists he is working with.
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