Tomas Bengt Erik Franck (born October 14, 1958 in

Ängelholm Ängelholm is a locality and the seat of Ängelholm Municipality in Skåne, Sweden with 39,612 inhabitants in 2010. History The old settlement ''Rynestad'' was mentioned around the year 1600. The city was founded in 1516 as Engelholm by King Chri ...

) is a Swedish

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

tenor saxophonist. Franck was raised in the town of

Helsingborg Helsingborg (, , , ) is a city and the seat of Helsingborg Municipality, Scania (Skåne), Sweden. It is the second-largest city in Scania (after Malmö) and ninth-largest in Sweden, with a population of 113,816 (2020). Helsingborg is the cent ...

, where he took up clarinet as a youth, switching to tenor sax in his teens. He studied at the Musik-högskolan in

Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal populat ...

in the early 1980s, where he formed a group called Equinox and performed with

Peps Persson Per-Åke Tommy Persson (20 December 1946 – 27 June 2021), known by the stage name Peps Persson, was a Swedish blues and reggae musician and social critic from Tjörnarp, Scania. Throughout his career he mostly made music in Swedish and was we ...

; starting in 1982, he began playing with Fredrik Norén, an association that would last until 1986. In the 1990s he worked with the Radioens Big Band and was the recipient of the

Ben Webster Prize The Ben Webster Prize is an annual jazz award set up by the Ben Webster Foundation to honour Danish and American jazz musicians as well as other professionals active in the promotion of jazz in those countries. The American jazz musician Ben Webste ...

in 1991. Franck has performed and recorded extensively as a sideman with, among others, Nikolaj Bent-zon, Ben Besiakov,

Thomas Blachman Thomas Blachman (born 1963) is a Danish jazz musician, composer, and judge on the Danish version of ''X Factor''. Biography Blachman is the son of Henning and Annie Blachman. One of his grandfathers is Isak Blachman, a Jewish immigrant from Vite ...

Thomas Clausen Thomas Clausen may refer to: * Thomas Clausen (educator) (1939–2002), educator from Baton Rouge, Louisiana *Thomas Clausen (musician) (born 1949), Danish jazz pianist *Thomas Clausen (mathematician) Thomas Clausen (16 January 1801, Snogbæk, ...

, Carsten Dahl,

Niels Lan Doky Niels Lan Doky (born 3 October 1963) is a Danish jazz pianist, composer and producer. He is the older brother of jazz bassist Chris Minh Doky. Biography He was born in Copenhagen of a Danish mother and Vietnamese father. His father worked as a ...

Billy Drummond Willis Robert "Billy" Drummond Jr. (born June 19, 1959) is an American jazz drummer. Early life Billy Drummond was born in Newport News, Virginia, where he grew up listening to the extensive jazz record collection of his father, an amateur dr ...

Al Foster Aloysius Tyrone Foster (born January 18, 1943) is an American jazz drummer. Foster's professional career began in the mid-60s, when he played and recorded with hard bop and swing musicians including Blue Mitchell and Illinois Jacquet. Foster pl ...

Lennart Ginman Lennart Ginman (born March 1960) is a Danish-Finnish bassist, composer and music producer. He has cooperated with artists like Steen Jørgensen, lead singer of Sort Sol in two joint albums, and Kirk Lightsey, an American jazz pianist with a joi ...

Roy Haynes Roy Owen Haynes (born March 13, 1925) is an American jazz drummer. He is among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career lasting over 80 years, he has played swing, bebop, jazz fusion, avant-garde jazz and is considered a pioneer of jazz ...

Kirk Lightsey Kirkland "Kirk" Lightsey (born February 15, 1937, Detroit, Michigan) is an American jazz pianist. Biography Lightsey had piano instruction from the age of five and studied piano and clarinet through high school. After service in the Army, Lights ...

Doug Raney Doug Raney (August 29, 1956 – May 1, 2016) was an American jazz guitarist. He was the son of jazz guitarist Jimmy Raney. Career Raney was born in New York City. He began to play the guitar when he was 14, beginning with rock and blues. He was ...

, and Jens Winther.

References

*Frank Büchmann-Møller, '' The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz''. 2nd edition, 2001, ed.

Barry Kernfeld Barry Dean Kernfeld (born August 11, 1950) is an American musicologist and jazz saxophonist who has researched and published extensively about the history of jazz and the biographies of its musicians. Education In 1968, Kernfeld enrolled at U ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Franck, Tomas 1958 births Living people Swedish jazz saxophonists Male saxophonists 21st-century saxophonists 21st-century Swedish male musicians Male jazz musicians Criss Cross Jazz artists