I grew up near Frankfurt/Main (Germany) in a family with firm catholic beliefs and a certain interest in music. For my parents, however, only classical and religious music enjoyed the privilege of being labelled “music”. While songs of the Comedian Harmonists and of a few German singer-songwriters were granted a sort of acoustic asylum, the rest was just noise.
Beginning at the age of ten, I had private piano lessons for about six years (I still feel pity for my piano teacher for whom it must have been a very hard psychological challenge to teach me as a boy...). At that time, my preferences as a music consumer were strongly focused on Hard & Heavy. While still at school, I had another three years of private organ lessons with financial support granted by the diocese of Limburg. During theses years, I discovered not only baroque organ music, but even more so French 19th and 20th century composers writing for the organ (Widor, Vierne, Dupré, Duruflé and the like) whose pieces still fascinate me to this day.
After school, I briefly considered to study music but quickly abandoned that idea when realizing in which precarious conditions most professional musicians have to live in our society. Instead, I chose a completely different, but not less intriguing subject – the law. Since then, music not only inspires me in many ways, but it also has become a perfect compensation for the hard intellectual work that every serious jurist has to do.
While studying law, I composed my first pieces (for organ). Meanwhile, I began to listen more and more to jazz, funk & soul. Eventually, at the age of 27, I discovered the saxophone as “my” instrument. Today, I feel at home in very different areas of music. As saxophone player of a Berlin based funk & soul band, I arrange the horn parts of most of the band's repertoire songs; I also write jazz and funk songs. Besides that, sacred music still is very important to me. In that area, I composed several choral preludes and variations on popular Christian hymns. Combining “my” two instruments (saxophone and organ) has a special appeal to me, both for sacred music and concert style pieces. If you wish to listen to some examples of my music, please check out www.soundcloud.com/thomasgroh.
I very much appreciate your interest in my music!
All the best, Thomas Groh