Christian Forshaw

Saxophonist Christian Forshaw is one of Britain’s top composer-performers. He is also a noted educator.
Forshaw was born in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, and grew up there. At first, he played the clarinet because, he was told the clarinet was a classical instrument and the saxophone pertained to jazz. Also, he encountered the attitude that a musician needed to play the clarinet before taking up the saxophone, an idea he calls completely misinformed. When he was 19, Forshaw moved to London to enter the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. At around this time, he had several key formative experiences. First, he worked with the hard-to-classify American composer Moondog, who sold pieces on the streets of New York dressed in a Viking costume and later moved to Germany. Second, he heard the classical saxophonist John Harle. Finally, he played with progressive rock composer and producer Brian Eno, learning from him the importance of developing his own musical identity. Forshaw graduated from the Guildhall School in 1995. In 2002, he was hired as a professor of saxophone by the school, and he remains in that position.
Forshaw performed with various leading orchestral ensembles, including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, and the Scottish Ensemble, with which he has performed Richard Rodney Bennett’s Concerto for alto saxophone and strings multiple times. He also performed and toured with smaller groups, including the Michael Nyman Band, Endymion, and the Composers Ensemble. He is a member of the chamber group Notes Inégales. Forshaw attracted the attention of recording companies with his debut album, Sanctuary, released on the Quartz label, which mixed medieval music, contemporary compositions, and works by Forshaw himself. He was offered a four-album deal by the Sony/BMG conglomerate but turned it down in favor of forming his own label, Integra Records, where he would have complete control. He released four albums on that label. The 2010s and 2020s saw Forshaw contribute compositions to releases by the vocal groups Voces8 and Tenebrae and to films, including Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. In 2022, Forshaw was heard with Tenebrae on the album When Sleep Comes on Signum Classics. ~ James Manheim