Peter Knudsen (1980-) started playing the piano and writing his own music at the age of 10 and discovered jazz and 20th century classical music as a teenager. At the age of 20 he was awarded Ingvar Johansson’s scholarship for young jazz musicians.

From 2001 to 2006 he studied at the conservatory in Gothenburg, a period in which he formed his own trio and the quintet Blåeld. Blåeld released their debut album Aurora (Footprint Records) in 2006, featuring original compositions that cross the boundaries between jazz, pop and 20th century music.

After working for several years on adapting the music of Debussy and Ravel for jazz trio, Knudsen and his trio recorded Impressions – a tribute to Debussy and Ravel in 2008, released on Found You Recordings. In 2009-2010 the trio made two summer tours in France, alongside performances in Swedish jazz clubs, festivals and concert halls.

In 2010, Knudsen launched the project “P-B revisited”, a quartet featuring Joakim Milder on saxophone, performing new arrangements of national romantic music by the composer Wilhelm Peterson-Berger. In 2011 and 2012, the group toured with the material, and in 2013 the album Peterson-Berger Revisited was released, recorded in the composer’s home Sommarhagen. At the same time, Knudsen worked on music for his eight-piece band Peter Knudsen Eight, original compositions inspired by nature, literature, and life itself. These were released on Sagas of the Present, an album released 2012 on the Italian label CAM Jazz and reviewed favorably by Down Beat and All About Jazz, alongside European magazines.

In 2016, Knudsen was commissioned to write new big band compositions for the acclaimed Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, resulting in the folklore-inspired suite Nature Spirits, also released as an album with the same name by Do Music Records in 2019. During 2015-2016, Knudsen also toured in Brazil on two occasions with a Brazilian-Swedish trio featuring drummer Kiko Freitas, as a part of a teacher exchange. Around the same time he started working with the group Derupeto, an international quartet with members from Sweden, Brazil and Mozambique. The group released their debut album Derupeto in 2020.

In 2018, Knudsen started a duo together with classical guitarist David Härenstam, a collaboration that led to the critically acclaimed album All in Twilight in 2023, a meeting between classical guitar and jazz piano with a repertoire that ranges from Japanese art music, via French guitar equilibrism, to Swedish folk music. Knudsen and Härenstam’s duo work was also integrated into a larger project of improvising over 20th-century music with invited musicians from Sweden and Norway, something that resulted in the album Reimaginations in 2024.

Knudsen also teaches piano, improvisation and ensemble playing at the School of Music, Theatre and Art at Örebro University, and is currently finishing a PhD in Artistic Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.