Jacob David & Elliott Jack Sansom
Biographie Jacob David & Elliott Jack Sansom
Elliott Jack Sansom
is a British pianist and composer who grew up in Solihull, outside Birmingham, where he started playing piano by ear at the age of four. His musical talent was passed down from his piano-playing mother and grandmother, who bought his first piano, sent him to Saturday music school and set up a small recording studio in the family garage.
His biggest early influence was his classically trained grandmother. The two would play Vera Lynn songs as duets, her on the right hand and him on the left, while cakes baked in the oven. Her Cole Porter, Gershwin and Rodgers led him to the Great American Songbook, and to Nat King Cole, Art Tatum, Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. “That’s when I got the jazz bug.”
He studied jazz piano at the Birmingham Conservatoire, first as a junior and then at university, playing with Stan Sulzmann and Norma Winstone, studying with John Taylor and touring with Clark Tracey. He was a finalist in BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year in 2016, and studied in Paris, where he played with the drummer Jimmy Cobb.
Then he took a swerve into the peaceful world of modern classical piano. In 2021 Kaleidoscope reached number one on Spotify’s Peaceful Piano playlist and stayed in the chart for eight months. His debut album Finding Beauty followed on Decca in September 2022, written through lockdown and after. Night Light, a diary of his first steps into fatherhood written for his son Alfie, followed in April 2025. His music has now been streamed more than 300 million times, with 32 tracks passing a million streams each.
“You could call it modern classical, but at the end of the day, I’m just pouring emotion into whatever I do, and as long as I’m doing that then I’m doing something right.”
Elliott often writes with other pianists, including Danish pianist Jacob David, with whom he made Kindred, and Canadian pianist Jesse Brown. He has also collaborated with American poet Trev Cimenski, British producer and composer Matt Robertson, Dutch landscape artist Tjitske Kamphuis and Irish animator Marc Corrigan.
