At age 2 Jelle asked his first drumkit and he got it. Because of his enthousiasm, the poor plastic drumheads were broken after three days…

Today, Jelle is an all round drummer who already worked in the music environment for a few years now. This began in all sorts of little bands.

He graduated at the music school of Turnhout where he had lessons from Dirk Dergent, Swa Mercelis, Lieven Cambre, …

After that, he began studying at the Conservatory of Antwerp. His teachers for drums where Jan De Haas and Teun Verbruggen.
At the last year of his education he had the opportunity to follow lessons with some great ‘JazzMasters’. These where: Jim Black, Ari Hoenig, Han Bennink, Dre Pallemaerts, Lieven Venken, Eric Thielemans, Herman Pardon & Pierre Tanguay.

He finished at the conservatory of The Hague, the Netherlands, in 2011 doing a master after master program with Eric Ineke, Joost Patocka, Stefan Krüger & Martijn Vink.

In september 2012 he started studying composition at the conservatory of Brussels with Kris Defoort.

Jelle plays with a few groups like Jelle Van Giel Group, The Jacquelines, NeoNerd, Eef Van Acker Quartet, Dependent Ensemble, Hot Feet Collective, Sam Joris Octet, International Dutch Quartet, Shakara Utd, Krema Kawa, TD, .. He also does a lot of freelance stuff.

He had the opportunity to play with some great musicians like Toots Thielemans, T.S. Galloway, Harvie S, Michael Rörby, Olaf Tarenskeen, Ack Van Rooyen, Freddy Sunder, Kurt Van Herck, Nico Schepers, Frank Vaganee, Marc Godfroid, Serge Plume, Jef Neve, Peter Verbraken, Frank De Ruyter, Esm Bos, Sergeant Garcia, Raymond Van Het Groenewoud, Dimitri Leue, Tine Embrechts, Pieter Embrechts, Axl Peleman, …

Workshops and masterclasses he followed with Gregory Hutchinson, The Monty Alexander trio, Jeff Ballard, Gene Lake, Peter Erskine, Hein Van De Gein, Andre Ceccarelli, Thomas Lang, Andrew d’Angelo , Dave Liebmann, Steve Clover, Claudius Valk, …