John Harle is one of the world's leading Saxophonists in the Concert Hall today. He has recorded more than 25 Concerto and Recital CDs, his solo recording of concerti by Debussy, Villa-Lobos and Glazunov having sold over 200,000copies to date, and he has performed in Concertos with many of the major Orchestras in the World.

He has had over twenty five concerti written for him, by composers such as John Tavener, Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, Mark Anthony Turnage, Michael Torke and Harrison Birtwistle (Panic given in 1995 at the Last Night of the Proms). In 1996, Harle's own work, Terror and Magnificence, recorded by Decca, was performed on tour by himself with Elvis Costello.

More recently Harle performed three world premieres: John Tavener's Total Eclipse at St. Paul's Cathedral with the Academy of Ancient Music, Dominic Muldowney's The Fall of Jerusalem and Joby Talbot's The Same Dog. His recent performances of Sally Beamish's Saxophone Concerto, The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone, were received with overwhelming critical acclaim. This work has been released on BIS, and filmed for BBCTV in 2003. He is also a conductor, musical director and producer in a variety of fields, covering artists as diverse as Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Moondog, Ute Lemper and Lesley Garrett.

He has worked prominently with the conductors Riccardo Chailly, Michael Tilson Thomas, Andrew Davis, Sir Neville Marriner and Franz Welser-Most. In recital, John Harle works regularly with Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, John Lenehan and Steve Lodder. He has also begun very exciting collaborations with Willard White, the Brodsky Quartet, Evelyn Glennie, and the Guildhall Strings. In 1989 John Harle was appointed Professor of Saxophone and Chamber Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Harle recently guest-conducted and performed with the Winterthur Orchestra as Artist in Residence. Recent concerts include performances with Herbie Hancock and the London Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia, English Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and Lucerne Symphony.

In his remarkable career Harle has written 35 concert works and over 40 film and television scores. Harle has also been nominated for a variety of awards. He has won a Royal Television Society award for his theme to BBC 1's Silent Witness, and received nominations for Defence of the Realm and Summer in the Suburbs, as well as a Grammy nomination for Terror and Magnificence. At the Proms of 1998 his opera, Angel Magick, was premiered (with a libretto by its director, David Pountney.)

In 2000, at the BBC Proms again, he not only performed and conducted, but also presented the annual BBC Blue Peter Prom. In 2001, he performed at the Proms with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Elmer Bernstein. The Proms of 2002 saw John Harle perform the premiere of his own Saxophone Concerto, "The Little Death Machine", with John Lubbock and the Orchestra of St John's Smith Square, as well as a new composition for the Kings Singers. Future Concerto commissions for John Harle include a Double Concerto with the Cellist Stephen Isserlis by John Tavener, Steve Mackey, and a second Concerto by Harrison Birtwistle.