Sylvain Beuf was born in Paris on April 6, 1964, and is a saxophonist, composer and arranger who plays soprano, alto and tenor, with flute and clarinet on some recent records. He started with classical training at the École nationale de musique d'Orsay, where he won a gold medal in saxophone in 1984 together with a chamber-music prize, and studied classical harmony with Pierre Lantier. He then moved into jazz at the CIM in Paris, taking jazz harmony with Jean-Claude Fohrenbach and Bernard Maury and saxophone with André Beun, Daniel Petitjean, Philippe Maté and Claude Tissendier.

By 1987 he was working in French and European jazz, and by 1991 his saxophone was on three records at once: Parcours (Blue Line), by the quintet of the drummer Louis Moutin and his brother, the bassist François Moutin; the Hervé Sellin Sextet's album with Branford Marsalis (Columbia); and Meets Claude Debussy by Gérard Badini's Super Swing Machine big band (Mantra). In 1993 the Académie du Jazz gave him the Prix Django-Reinhardt as French musician of the year, and that year he also made his first record as a leader, Impro Primo (RDC Records), a quartet date with the pianist Bojan Z, the bassist Christophe Wallemme and the drummer Stéphane Huchard. French Wikipedia says it earned him a Djangodor in 1994.

The late 1990s brought regular work with the drummer André Ceccarelli, whose quartet records West Side Story (BMG, 1997) and 61:32 (BMG France, 1999) feature Beuf on tenor and soprano saxophones alongside the pianist Antonio Farò and the bassist Rémi Vignolo; Beuf also arranged three pieces on the first of them. His own records continued with La Danse des Inter-Nôtes (RDC Records, 1999), a quintet with the pianist Manuel Rocheman, Wallemme, the percussionist François Verly and the drummer Jean-Pierre Arnaud, and Soul Notes (Naïve, 2001), which kept Rocheman, Wallemme and Verly and added Laurent Robin on drums. In 2000 he was named a Talent Midem and received the Victoires du Jazz award for jazz revelation of the year, according to French Wikipedia. In 2001 he made a trio album with the bassist Diego Imbert and the drummer Franck Agulhon, Sylvain Beuf [trio] (Naïve), and returned to that format for Another Building (RDC Records) and the double album Mondes parallèles (Cristal Records, 2007). He also played tenor saxophone on the Japanese singer Akiko's Paris-recorded album Girl Talk (Verve, 2001).

Octovoice (2004) is his most unusual leader project: he composed the music and directed a group of five singers (Laurence Saltiel, Brigitte Jacques, Laura Littardi, Thierry Péala and Vincent Puech) with the organist Emmanuel Bex and the drummer Louis Moutin. In 2007 he recorded New Edge (Cristal Records) in a trio billed to the singer Thierry Péala, Beuf and the pianist Bruno Angelini. His next leader records were Joy (Such Prod), a live sextet date with the alto saxophonist Pierrick Pédron, the trombonist Denis Leloup, the pianist Jean-Yves Jung, Imbert and Agulhon, and the electric band record Electric Excentric (Such Prod, 2012), with the guitarist Manu Codjia, the bassist Philippe Bussonnet, the drummer Julien Charlet and guests including the trumpeter Nicolas Folmer. Plénitude (Impro Primo Records, 2015), recorded in September 2014, kept Codjia, Bussonnet and Charlet and added Laurent Coulondre on organ and keyboards, and Triple Entente (Trebim Music, 2015) is a trio with the guitarist Michel Perez and Imbert.

The quartet with Ceccarelli, Farò and the bassist Thomas Bramerie has been a recurring partnership since Live Sunside Session (Cristal Records), recorded live at the Sunside club in Paris on November 3, 2007 and issued in 2008. It was followed by ASTA: Passers of Time (Bonsaï Music, October 18, 2019) and Asta 2 (2023). Between them came Time Feel (Bonsaï Music, 2021), recorded in December 2020 with the organist Damien Argentieri and the drummer Fabrice Moreau, and Long Distance (Trebim Music, 2024), recorded in February 2023 with the pianist Pierre-Alain Goualch, the bassist Philippe Aerts and the drummer Gautier Garrigue, on which he also plays flute and clarinet. He is the alto saxophonist on three albums by the pianist Pierre de Bethmann's Medium Ensemble (Sisyphe, 2014; Exo, 2016; Todhe Todhe, 2018).

Beside performing, he has long taught. According to French Wikipedia he ran a jazz class and a big band at the conservatoire of Paris's ninth arrondissement from 1998 to 2000, has directed the Lisieux town jazz course since 2001, has given masterclasses in France, Senegal, Romania, Mexico and Ukraine, and coordinates the jazz department of the Versailles Grand Parc regional conservatoire.

Beuf is a mainstream and post-bop saxophonist who writes most of the material on his own records (French Wikipedia credits him with about fifty original compositions), and his catalogue moves among formats: acoustic trios built on saxophone, double bass and drums, a quintet with piano and percussion, an electric band with guitar and electric bass, a drummer-led quartet with Ceccarelli and Farò, and the vocal-ensemble project Octovoice. Standards sit beside the originals: Soul Notes includes a Sonny Rollins piece and a Consuelo Velázquez song, and Mondes parallèles has a whole disc of standards. His teachers were largely French jazz pedagogues of the CIM, and his sideman record puts him in two French traditions at once, the swing big band of Gérard Badini and the modern small groups of Ceccarelli and Pierre de Bethmann. Within France his standing is marked by the Prix Django-Reinhardt (1993) and the Victoires du Jazz award of 2000.