Gianluca Petrella was born March 14, 1975 in Bari. The son of a trombonist, he was sitting in with his father's Dixieland band before he was a teenager, and started his professional career with saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano in 1993.

In 2001 he became a full-time member of Enrico Rava's quintet, already profiled on jazzprofiles.com, joining a band Rava has described as a kind of finishing school for Italian jazz musicians. Rava has called Petrella "the best trombone player today." That same year, Petrella won Italy's Django d'Or Award and Musica Jazz's critics poll for Best Young Talent, and in 2006 and 2007 DownBeat named him Best Emerging Artist in the trombone category.

Beyond Rava's band, he has worked with Joey Calderazzo, Greg Osby, Carla Bley, and Pat Metheny, and has recorded on ECM both under his own name and alongside Rava. His own leader catalog is extensive and stylistically restless, running from straight-ahead records like There's No Greater Love (2002) to electronic-leaning projects like his Cosmic Band and Indigo 4 work.

Petrella's playing spans conventional post-bop trombone work, shaped directly by his years in Enrico Rava's quintet, and a more electronic, genre-crossing direction on his own leader projects, reflecting a restlessness Rava himself has noted in his most celebrated alumni.