Andrea Grillini is a drummer, composer and improviser from Castel San Pietro Terme, a town in the Metropolitan City of Bologna (Discogs' own artist profile for him gives the shorthand "born in Bologna in 1985"). He trained locally before moving outward: percussion study from 1998 to 2004 at the music school of Ozzano dell'Emilia under G. Capitanio and drum teacher Christian Rovatti, private lessons with Mauro Gherardi from 2003 to 2008, modern-drumming study at CPM (Centro Professione Musica) in Milan with Walter Calloni, Max Furian and Christian Meyer, and jazz drums at the Bologna Conservatory under Stefano Paolini. He rounded out that training with improvisation workshops at Nuoro Jazz, Siena Jazz and Monteombraro, and later attended masterclasses with guitarist Marc Ducret and cellist Tristan Honsinger.

His concert career picked up in earnest in 2007. An early credit from that period, a live set with the trio Luther Blissett issued as Live @ Downbeat Festival '07 (Eclectic Polpo Records, 2008), documents this stretch: a free-improvising unit with bassist Antonio D'Intino, double bassist Lucio Gorenzi, electronics player Dario Fariello and guitarist Carlo D'Alessandro, credited on Discogs as Grillini's own group entity ("Luther Blissett," artist ID 1243504, distinct from the Italian writers' collective of the same pen name).

In 2010 Grillini formed Bad Uok, the project most identified with his name, gathering pianist/keyboardist Andrea Calì, guitarist Leonardo Rizzi and trombonist Federico Pierantoni into a deliberately bass-less quartet. The idea, as the band's own notes put it, was to free all four instruments from a fixed role rather than lock a rhythm section into a conventional bass-and-drums foundation. Bad Uok's debut, Enter (Auand Records, 2013, recorded at San Giuseppe Records in Nipozzano), drew strong national and international critical notice; a second album, Lateless (Trouble in the East Records, 2020, actually recorded in November 2015 at Jambona Lab), was reviewed by JazzTrail at an A- grade, praised for how the band "keeps the thrill factor throughout as they invest everything in rhythm and mood" while moving between avant-jazz, electronic, funk and R&B textures. A live recording, Bad Uok (Live in Berlin), followed from a 2022 European tour date. By the mid-2020s the group had expanded into a quintet for some performances, adding Vincenzo Vasi (vocals, theremin, electronics) and Nazareno Caputo (vibraphone, lithophone, marimba) - the lineup billed at Bologna's Teatro San Leonardo for the "INTENSO" concert (September 2024) and at Florence's 30th Pinocchio Jazz festival (November 2024).

Grillini's other regular groups read as a map of Italy's cooperative, non-mainstream jazz scene, most of them centered on the Bologna/Emilia-Romagna circuit and the labels AUAND, Aut Records and Fonterossa Records. He is a founding member of Tell No Lies, a horn-heavy free-jazz unit around pianist/composer Nicola Guazzaloca, bassist Luca Bernard and saxophonist Edoardo Marraffa, which has released a self-titled debut (Fonterossa, 2017) and three further albums - Anasyrma (2020), Hide Nothing (2022) and Mantica (2025), all on Aut Records - expanding its horn section along the way. He co-leads the trio-turned-quartet Circles 44 with guitarist/electronics player Joseph Circelli and pianist Massimiliano Amatruda (Cratere, 2020; In the Grip, 2024, both Aut Records), and plays in the acoustic trio Ground 71 with pianist Giampiero Locatelli and bassist Stefano Dallaporta (self-titled, AMP Music & Records, 2020). He is a longtime member of saxophonist/flautist Piero Bittolo Bon's group Bread & Fox, documented on Big Hell On Air (AUAND, 2016) and the live album This Is Sour Music (Trouble in the East, recorded Berlin, November 2018), the latter also featuring pianist Alfonso Santimone, who mixed the record. In 2019 he was a section drummer in the 25-piece Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, co-directed by Bittolo Bon and Santimone, recorded live at Teatro "De Micheli" in Copparo with support from Bologna Jazz Festival and Jazz Club Ferrara. His discography also includes the free-improvising Korla Trio (Because Of Him, Improvvisatore Involontario, 2012, with Piero Bittolo Bon), the funk/jazz-funk/prog-rock leaning quartet Duck Juice (House Made Of Sticks, 2020), the electric quartet Big Monitors (Knots And Notes, AUAND, 2021, featuring trumpeter Gabriele Mitelli and a cover of a William Parker composition, "Vermeer"), guitarist Luca Perciballi's Organic Gestures (Approximately Grids With A Plan, Aut Records, 2021), and composer Alessandro Bosetti's electronic/jazz/classical hybrid work Didone (Kohlhaas, 2021), recorded during a Centro Musica Modena artist residency.

A genuine, Discogs-confirmed connection runs between Grillini and reed player Achille Succi, already profiled on this site: the two appear together on Indù's Juggernaut (Slam Productions, 2014) - a trio with keyboardist Claudio Vignali that plays originals by Grillini and Vignali alongside a Tim Berne composition - and a decade later on Circles 44's In the Grip (2024), where Succi guests on bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet.

In 2015 Grillini's group Fuel Quartet, with saxophonist Giovanni Benvenuti, trombonist Federico Pierantoni and bassist Fabio Tuminelli, was one of three groups selected for MIDJ's (Musicisti Italiani di Jazz) "We Insist" award for young talent, under a jury chaired by pianist Franco D'Andrea, also already profiled on this site. The same lineup, billed as the Giovanni Benvenuti Quartet, recorded Che Fine Ha Fatto Il Signor Bowman (Emme Record Label, 2015).

His own official biography (repeated on Aut Records' artist page and in AngelicA/Cultura Bologna festival programs) lists a wider circle of collaborators, most from live and workshop settings rather than commercial recordings: David Murray, Ken Vandermark, Marc Ducret, Bruno Chevillon, Tristan Honsinger, Steven Bernstein, Chico Pinheiro, Jonathan Finlayson, Don Byron, Wayne Horvitz and Ralph Alessi among them. None of these could be independently confirmed against a specific dated recording or Discogs credit within this build (see notes for the full check); they are named here as documented biographical claims from the artist's own primary sources, not as verified discography entries. David Murray, in particular, already has a profile on jazzprofiles.com; the claimed connection is repeated across multiple independent sources about Grillini but without a specific dated session or credit behind it.

Beyond the stage, Grillini's touring credits include a run with the group Luther Blissett through England and the United States, a Human Rights Nights Film Festival appearance in South Africa tied to the Soweto Art Festival, and club and festival dates at Bologna Jazz Festival, Venezia Jazz Festival and the Chicago Improvisers Music series. He continues to lead and record with Bad Uok, Tell No Lies and Circles 44, with Mantica (Tell No Lies, Aut Records) released in 2025 as his most recent recorded credit at build time.

Grillini works across two poles that rarely sit in the same catalog: fully composed, ensemble-driven jazz (the horn-section writing in Tell No Lies and the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra) and open improvisation (Korla Trio, Luther Blissett, the duo/small-group settings inside Circles 44 and Bad Uok). The through-line, visible from his earliest working band onward, is a resistance to fixed instrumental roles - most explicit in Bad Uok's decision to work without a bass player so that piano, guitar, trombone and drums could trade rhythmic and harmonic functions freely. That same instinct carries into his more groove-oriented projects: Duck Juice leans into funk, jazz-funk and prog-rock textures, and JazzTrail's review of Bad Uok's Lateless specifically credited the band with folding "danceable electronic music" and R&B accents into an otherwise avant-jazz frame without losing composure. Across his catalog - whether an acoustic piano trio like Ground 71, a big-band composer's collective like the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, or a stripped-down free-improvising unit - Grillini functions as much as a composer and organizing "sound catalyst" (a description used in his own artist bios) as a drummer for hire, building new working groups around his own written material rather than moving through other leaders' bands as a pure sideman.