Thomas de Pourquery was born on July 7, 1977 in Bondy, in the Seine-Saint-Denis department east of Paris. He took up the saxophone at fourteen, studied first with the Italian saxophonist Stefano Di Battista, and then entered the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris in the class of François Jeanneau. He plays alto and soprano saxophone, sings, writes most of the music for his own bands, and has also worked as a film actor and composer.

His first records came in 2000. In January and February of that year a quintet he co-led with the trombonist Daniel Zimmermann recorded an album of originals and a version of "Summertime", and in May he played alto and soprano saxophone on the live album A Personal Landscape, made with Laurent Cugny's Big Band Lumière and the singer David Linx. In 2002 the Zimmermann and de Pourquery quintet won first prize for orchestra and soloist at the La Défense jazz competition, and the same year he is credited as a saxophonist on Charmediterranéen (ECM), recorded by the Orchestre national de jazz under its directors Paolo Damiani and Jeanneau, with Javier Girotto and Médéric Collignon in the band. He also recorded with guitarist Csaba Palotaï's group Grupa Palotaï (Minimyths, Budapest Music Center Records, 2002) and joined pianist Andy Emler's MegaOctet, in whose ranks he can be heard on Dreams in Tune (Nocturne, 2006), West in Peace (Nocturne, 2007), the concert film On Air - Live in Paris and, much later, Just a Beginning (PEEWEE!, 2021).

In the second half of the 2000s he led two projects of his own. Rigolus, a punk-leaning collective in which he sang and played saxophone, issued an album on Chief Inspector in 2007. The quintet with Zimmermann became DPZ, which released He's Looking at You, Kid (E-Motive, 2009) with the guitarist Maxime Delpierre, the bassist Sylvain Daniel, the drummer David Aknin and a string quartet on two tracks. The record brought a three-season residency at the Jazz sous les pommiers festival in Coutances. In 2010 he founded The Brain Festival, a charity event raising money for research on neurodegenerative diseases, and in 2012 he released The Endless Summer (Nueva Onda), a band record with three singers and a saxophone section that adds Sylvain Rifflet and Fabrice Theuillon.

In 2011 he formed Supersonic, a sextet with the saxophonist and keyboardist Laurent Bardainne, the trumpeter Fabrice Martinez, the pianist Arnaud Roulin, the bassist Frederick Galiay and the drummer Edward Perraud. Their first album, Play Sun Ra, was recorded in March 2013 at Château-Landon, appeared on Quark Records in early 2014 and drew on six pieces by Sun Ra, a version of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "Eulipions" and originals; it won the Victoires du jazz in 2014 as instrumental jazz album of the year. Sons of Love (Label Bleu, March 3, 2017) followed, with ten originals and Sun Ra's "We Travel the Space Ways", and in 2017 the Victoires du jazz named him French artist or instrumental ensemble of the year. Back to the Moon (Lying Lions Productions, September 2021), recorded in July 2020, is the band's third studio album.

Around Supersonic he has kept a wide range of other work. He appears on Label Bleu's thirtieth-anniversary concert album with Henri Texier, Michel Portal, Bojan Z, Manu Codjia and Perraud (recorded in Amiens on March 3, 2016, issued in 2017); sings "Sugar Man" on Baptiste Trotignon's You've Changed (2019), an album that gives each track a different guest; and made Nougaro (2019), an album of Claude Nougaro songs, with the singer-pianist Babx and the singer-percussionist André Minvielle. In 2021 the trio Drôles de Dames with Martinez and Bardainne released a free-improvised album on the Hungarian label BMC, recorded in Budapest in June 2019. The Académie du Jazz gave him its Prix Django-Reinhardt for 2021, announced on March 3, 2022, and he was the music director of the 2022 César ceremony. A pop side runs alongside the jazz: the duo VKNG with Delpierre (Illumination, Naïve, 2015), the songs he records as Von Pourquery from 2020, and the album Let the Monster Fall (Animal63, 2024). He has also acted in films including Saint Omer (2022).

De Pourquery is an alto and soprano saxophonist who also sings lead and writes for voices as readily as for horns. His jazz lineage runs through the free and spiritual tradition: Discogs files Play Sun Ra, the first of Supersonic's albums and built on Sun Ra's repertoire, under free jazz, adds space-age for Sons of Love and Back to the Moon, and files DPZ's debut under jazz-rock and free improvisation. In Supersonic he sings lead and writes the songs, and the sextet pairs a jazz horn section with synthesizers and a rock-minded rhythm section; one article on Sons of Love points to the rock influence in "Give the Money Back" and to Sun Ra's "We Travel the Space Ways" as the one outside piece. A Citizen Jazz review of Back to the Moon praised the energy of "Jungle" and the ballad "Bring Me Back the Day" while finding some pieces close in colour. Because VKNG, Von Pourquery and Let the Monster Fall are pop projects, they sit outside the jazz body of work described here, which rests on the quintet and DPZ records, Supersonic, the MegaOctet and Orchestre national de jazz work, and the French jazz awards he has won.