Claire Phillips, born in San Francisco, is an Oakland, California-based saxophonist, flautist, composer, song-writer and educator. She earned a BA in Music from UC Santa Cruz and a Master’s in Contemporary Music Composition from the University of Sheffield, England where she founded and conducted the Sheffield University Jazz Orchestra and received the Julian Payne Award for academic excellence. Claire furthered her jazz performance studies at the IMEP Paris College of Music (a Berklee College of Music Global Partner) in Paris, France.  After a stint in France and England, she returned to her roots in the SF Bay Area in 2008.

Claire has performed and written for a variety of ensembles ranging from jazz sextet (Vague A Lame), contemporary classical piano/sax duos (C Comme C with Charlotte Torres in France and currently with Emily Tian), saxophone quartets (The Naked Sax Quartet and London Fields Saxophone Quartet), to big band (UCSC JO, SUJO and the SFJAZZ Monday Night Band), funk band (Stymie & the Pimp Jones Love Orchestra) and currently plays with the Klezmer and Balkan band (Hernandez Hideaway). She also wrote the music for a contemporary musical, The Line (Book by Kevin Causey), that premiered at Piano Fight in San Francisco.

In addition to her private music lesson studio, Claire has led and managed education programs for SFJAZZ as the Education Program Manager and Teaching Artist, and taught saxophone, flute, theory and jazz ensembles for youth and adults  as faculty for the SF Community Music Center and Oakland School for the Arts. She is currently teaching music in English and French at the Francophone Charter School of Oakland in addition to performing regularly and raising her two young daughters.