About Jos Cole

Music was never really a choice. Born in Switzerland and raised across Switzerland, America, and England, Jos grew up with a musical mother and a guitar in his hands by the age of six, spending hours experimenting with chord progressions long before he had any idea what they were called. That instinct to explore, to find out what sounds could do, has never left him.

At eleven, during middle school in America, he picked up the saxophone. When the family moved to England, he threw himself into the ABRSM graded system, achieving Grade 8 with distinction within six years of first touching the instrument. By the time A Levels came around, music was already deeply embedded in who he was.

What happened at A Level says everything about that. Jos arrived with no formal theory, no experience of notation, no knowledge of composition software or DAW. He had never written a piece of music on a page. He left as one of just eight students nationally to achieve an A* on his exam board, with full marks in both performance and composition. The technical barriers that slow others down simply did not apply. Music is too deeply part of who he is.

When the time came to choose where to study, Jos was offered a partial scholarship to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, one of the most prestigious conservatoires in the world. What happened there was unusual. Unable to choose between his two passions, he moved between saxophone performance and composition until the RNCM did something it had never done before; it designed a new course around him, allowing him to pursue both simultaneously. His degree was split equally between the two disciplines, achieving first class honours in composition and a 2.1 in performance.

In his final year he was awarded the Rob Buckland Saxophone Composition Prize, recognition of the distinctly compositional voice he had developed across his time at the college.

Today Jos works across performance, composition, and teaching. He fronts Aurora, a six-piece conservatoire-trained function band, performs as Jos Sax alongside Bongo with the Flow, and takes on composition and arrangement commissions across classical, cinematic, and contemporary styles. He is currently working towards his ABRSM saxophone fellowship.

At the heart of everything is the same impulse that started with a six year old and a guitar. Lock Jos away with his composition software and his creativity sparks. Everything else flows from that.