Pauls Pokratnieks

Pauls Pokratnieks is a drummer who specialises in jazz and other improvised music styles. He holds a master’s degree in jazz drumming and has experience playing internationally with a wide variety of musicians. Pokratnieks took his first steps in the field of music at age six, when he enrolled in a music school in Riga, where he studied piano, music theory, and orchestral percussion instruments. At the age of 16, he began to play a drum set and develop an interest in jazz music. He graduated from the jazz department of the Riga Cathedral Choir School in 2009 and continued his music studies at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, earning a master’s degree in jazz music in 2015. Pokratnieks has performed with various improvised music ensembles all over Europe, including at the AglanJazz Festival (Cyprus), Saulkrasti Jazz, Rīgas Ritmi (Latvia), Casa Del Jazz (Italy), Warsaw Summer Jazz Days (Poland), and the Reykjavik Jazz Festival (Iceland). He has always been inspired by the so-called Nordic/Scandinavian sound, and in 2016 he moved to Gothenburg, where he focuses on composing music for his band and working as a freelance musician and teacher.