TOMAS FRANCK

The Early Years Tomas Franck was born in 1958 in the small town of Engelholm in Sweden, close to Helsingborg, where he grew up in a music-loving family. Tomas Franck started playing the clarinet when he was ten and switched to the tenor saxophone at the age of fifteen. He soon began gigging at a local club in Helsingborg in a quartet with the legendary blind pianist Lennart Nilsson (who appears on a live recording from Sweden with Charlie Parker). Here Franck had the opportunity to play with some of the finest musicians in Sweden, as well as Americans such as Dexter Gordon, Tim Hagans, Richard Boone, Pepper Adams, Idrees Sulieman and Ernie Wilkins - just to mention a few. He moved to Malmoe in 1978 and studied at Musikhøgskolan (music school) for two years. Here he met the Swedish alto sax player Håkan Broström and together they formed the read more...