Christoph Grab

Christoph Grab is a saxophonist and composer who lives in Switzerland and is very active as a live musician. He received the Swiss Jazz Award in 2023. He studied at the Swiss Jazz School in Berne (saxophone, composition and arranging). His teachers and mentors included Andy Scherrer, Sal Nistico, Jerry Bergonzi, Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman. He has become a major source of inspiration on the Swiss and European jazz scene, both as a saxophonist and as a composer, and has recorded countless albums, worked for radio and television and given numerous tours and concerts around the world.

Christoph Grab is currently active internationally with his jazz projects BLOSSOM (Alessi, Grab, Favre, Traxel, Baschnagel), REFLECTIONS (Thoeni, Grab, Tschopp, Oester, Baschnagel) and his soul jazz group ROOT AREA (Johänntgen, Grab, Thomi, Frey). He composes for a wide variety of groups and is a member of the Zurich Composers Collective.

In addition to his own bands and freelance work, he is a member of a number of permanent formations, including Baumann/Grab/Haemmerli/Renold, Christoph Steiner's Escape Argot, Elmar Frey Septett, Raphael Jost Group, Reto Anneler STILLE POST, ELLINGTONALITY, Axel Fischbacher Oktett, Spittin' Horns, Herbie Kopf Quartett and others.

His intensive work with live electronics and his performances with pirated toys transformed into sound machines have also helped him to make a name for himself on the electronic and DJ scene.

Alongside his activities as a musician, Christoph Grab has been teaching saxophone and improvisation at the Jazz department of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) since 1998.

Photo credit: René Mosele