Gavin Harrison
Porcupine Tree, King Crimson
Gavin Harrison started to play the drums at age 6 influenced by his father Bobby, who was a well established jazz trumpet player and part time drummer. By the age of 11 he studied with drummer Joe Hodson who taught him how to read and write music along with a solid base of grip and timing techniques. He started to play professionally at 16 when he left school – and has continued to this day.
At 19 years old, Gavin joined prog rock band Renaissance, he later joined Iggy Pop in 1986 for a world tour. Around this time Gavin began working as a successful session drummer in London. By the early 90s Gavin had joined British funk group Incognito and recorded their most successful album „Inside Life”. Shortly afterwards he was invited to play and record in Japan and then to Italy to tour and record with a number of Italian artists, and started to work with Italy’s biggest artist Claudio Baglioni in 1992 along side Tony Levin on bass. After the Italian tour Gavin was invited to join Level 42 for their last tour, including a live album recording. Frequent trips back to Italy to work with Eros Ramazzotti and Claudio Baglioni before he began to work with British soul diva Lisa Stansfield in 1997 touring around the world. 1998 Gavin played a stadium tour with Baglioni again playing to enormous crowds in venues like the Olympic Stadium in Rome (in front of 92,000 people). In 2000 Gavin became musical director of UK garage legends Artful Dodger and around this time started to work with the highly acclaimed soul artist Lewis Taylor. Afterwards Gavin played tours with Go West and Lisa Stansfield. In early 2002 Gavin was invited to join the art rock band Porcupine Tree and has played with them ever since – recording the albums In Absentia (2002), Deadwing (2005), Fear of a Blank Planet (2007) and the most recent one, The Incident (2009) and making several tours of the USA and Europe. Gavin has written several award winning educational drum methods. In 2007 Gavin Harrison won the Modern Drummer Award "Best Prog Drummer" and was invited to play the 2008 edition of the international renowned Modern Drummer Festival.
Website: www.drumset.demon.co.uk
