Eric Harland

Born in Houston, Texas, in 1976, Eric Harland established himself from the 1990s in American jazz as a drummer and later as a leader, with a playing style that articulates post‑bop, modern swing, open improvisation and more fluid rhythms that sometimes borrow from contemporary music. Trained at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and then at the Manhattan School of Music, Harland began playing professionally very early before settling into the New York circuit. His trajectory includes central groups of the recent jazz scene, notably Charles Lloyd’s quartet, Dave Holland’s Prism, James Farm with Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks and Matt Penman, and the SFJAZZ Collective between 2005 and 2012. Eric Harland has also played with McCoy Tyner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Chris Potter, Julian Lage, Terence Blanchard, Ravi Coltrane and Taylor Eigsti. As a leader, his discography includes Voyager: Live by Night (2011), Vipassana (2014) and 13th Floor (2018), three albums that extend this flexible and dense approach to rhythm, attentive to the flow between composition and collective interaction. Harland has also contributed to several film scores alongside Terence Blanchard.