Andreas was born in 1964 in Visby on the island of Gotland but spent most of his childhood in the northern town of Umea. Starting out as a rock guitarist, heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix, his local music teacher introduced him to the music of John McLaughlin. Bewildered by the technical wizardry of John McLaughlin, Andreas practiced night and day in ambition of becoming "the fast guy in town". Things changed rapidly when Andreas, in the early eighties, met the American reed-legend Sahib Shihab who was a guest teacher at a local jazz workshop. Through the guidance of Shihab, Andreas discovered the magic of be-bop and shortly afterwards he bought his first straight-ahead jazz albums. Most of them featuring his favorite guitarist, Jimmy Raney. A few months later, Andreas was picked up by legendary valve-trombonist, Lars Lystedt, and started a ten-year-spell with Lars Lystedt Quintet. Andreas turned professional in 1989 when he was asked to join the full-time professional Visby Big Band. Andreas was a featured soloist on the critically acclaimed "Visby Big Band & Putte Wickman Fine Together" (Dragon CD 210). During his spell with the big band, Andreas was picked up again. This time by the Swedish clarinet legend Putte Wickman who initiated the start of an intense period of frequent touring and the release of Andreas' first album as a leader: "The Andreas Pettersson Trio & Putte Wickman Live in Finland" (Dragon CD 238). Following this CD-release, Andreas played with many of the top names in jazz. For example Toots Thielemans, John Fedchock, Viktoria Tolstoy, Jan Lundgren, Svante Thuresson, Ulf Johansson-Were, Gustavo Bergalli, Claes Jansson, Joe Sample, Arne Domnerus, Bernt Rosengren, Pete Christlieb, Hector Parlan, Kjell Ohman and many more. In the mid-nineties, Andreas moved to Stockholm to form the Andreas Pettersson Band, a hand-picked quintet consisting of the biggest names in Swedish jazz. Since the release of "Joyrider" (Sittel CD 9219) and "Cookie & The Hawk" (Sittel CD 9248) which feature Andreas' own writing, this band has frequently toured Sweden and Scandinavia to become one of the most successful Swedish jazz bands. In february 2000 Andreas formed a quartet featuring some of the brightest young talents in Sweden. The album "Duke with a Gibson" was very well recieved all over Scandinavia. The "Duke"-album also got frequent air-play on several radiostations in California which resulted in a concert-tour in the L.A-area in 2001. During the same year he also teamed up with drummer -legend Ed Thigpen and Danish bass-virtuoso Mads Vinding for the critically acclaimed "Getting Close To You" (Sittel CD 9278) This fine quartet also featured the young Swedish piano-wizard Daniel Karlsson. In june 2001 Andreas Pettersson was able to form his dream -team featuring the great saxophonist Ernie Watts and the late LA drummer -legend John Guerin. This powerful quintet finished their week-long tour at the famous Hollywood-club "The Baked Potato" -resulting in the burning live CD "At The Baked Potato" (Sittel CD 9282).The album was called an "all-time classic" by jazz magazines in Belgium The powerful combination of Andreas Pettersson and Ernie Watts was a big attraction in Scandinavia and California and they toured consistently during 2002-2004. In 2005 Andreas Pettersson signed with Universal to release the critically acclaimed "Gullin on Guitar" (Universal/Sonet). This CD is a tribute to the famous Swedish baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin whose impact on Swedish jazz cannot be overemphasized. However, Andreas Pettersson decided to rearrange these famous compositions to make them sound a little different and up-to-date. The concept "Gullin on Guitar" turned out to be a great success -by some journalists even called groundbreaking- and Andreas and his quartet travelled extensively all over Sweden. During the same period Andreas also started collaborations with legendary pianist Junior Mance and vocalist Deborah Brown. Both these projects being very popular in Sweden-they still do tours together. During the fall of 2006 Andreas started writing for a new challenging project called "Gershwin on Guitar" . Initially Andreas Pettersson was little reluctant to dig deep into the valts of George Gershwin but later he decided to approach the music with same curiosity as with Lars Gullin. The resulting CD "Gershwin on Guitar" (Universal/Emarcy) does not only present some fresh ,spicy arrangements of classic George Gershwin songs but also three classical preludes written in 1929. The Preludes played here for the first time ever by a jazz quartet. Andreas Pettersson amazing technical guitar playing combines burning energy with romantic self-reflection. His blues roots are easily detectable but he possesses a sense of phrasing that should remind more of horn-players. As one of very few jazz guitarists endorsed by Gibson USA, his powerful, fiery treatment of the Gibson Super 400 CES places him among the very best in the world.