Christof May (born 6 April 1970 in Radolfzell, Baden-Württemberg) is a German jazz musician who performs on the clarinet and saxophone.
May studied jazz saxophone with John Ruocco at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague from 1992-1998 and classical clarinet with Ab Vos from 1998-2002. He earned a Master’s Degree in Music there.
From 1995 on, he worked as a sideman with Susanne Abbuehl, Michel Portal, David Liebman, Claudio Puntin, Samuel Rohrer, Florian Zenker, Amina Figarova, Erik Ineke and Trygve Seim. With Abbuehl, May can be heard on the ECM-records productions April and Compass. He toured through Europe, Africa und North America, playing a.o. in Cape Town, Maputo, Montreal, Portland, Oregon, Oslo, Paris, Rome and other European cities. With the Dutch radio orchestra Metropole Orkest, he worked a.o. with Kenny Werner and Bob Malach and recorded CDs with drummer Terry Bozzio, amongst others. In the classical field, he worked with the symphony orchestras of Krefeld-Mönchengladbach, Aachen and Duisburg in Germany.
His debut Maygus was inspired by the music of Miles Davis from the 1970s. The name of the project refers to the 1974 released record Dark Magus.[1] The band’s first CD was released in November 2007 as Vol. 20 of the series “Jazzthing Next Generation”, in a cooperation of German magazine Jazzthing and the jazz label, Double Moon.