Born in 1989, alto saxophonist Sam Braysher studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, graduating in 2011 with a First Class Honours degree before becoming the jazz department’s Guildhall Artist Fellow for two years.

Based in East London, he now maintains a busy freelance career playing saxophone and clarinet across a wide variety of music, including early jazz and swing, straight-ahead and more contemporary styles of jazz. Since graduating he has performed with musicians including Jorge Rossy, Barry Green, Pete Hurt, John Warren Nonet, Mark Nightingale, Steve Fishwick, Gareth Lockrane, and Will Arnold-Forster (with whose quartet he won GSMD’s Chartered Surveyors’ Jazz Prize), and bands such as the London Jazz Orchestra, the London City Big Band and Alex Mendham & His Orchestra (an authentic 1920s/‘30s dance band which holds a residency at the Savoy Hotel). He has played at venues including Ronnie Scott’s, Pizza Express Jazz Club, the Vortex, the 606 Club, the Barbican Hall, Kings Place and Royal Festival Hall.

When leading his own trio or quartet (an early edition of which won the 2010 UK Jazz Radio Young Performers’ Award) he takes a particular interest in exploring lesser-known material from the American Songbook and jazz canon.

In April 2016 he travelled to New York to record his debut album as a leader, a duo with the American pianist Michael Kanan. Released in 2017 on Fresh Sound New Talent, it features pieces by Jerome Kern, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Victor Young, Duke Ellington and Tadd Dameron, as well as one original composition.

https://sambraysher.com/