John Douglas Surman was born on August 30, 1944, in Tavistock, Devon. He studied clarinet as a child, then tenor, baritone and soprano saxophones, and began playing jazz in 1962 as a schoolboy in a Devon group led by the composer and bandleader Mike Westbrook, then an art student. The same year he moved to London to study at the London College of Music (he later studied at the University of London Institute of Education), and he spent his evenings jamming with the saxophonist Mike Osborne, bassist Harry Miller and drummer Alan Jackson at places such as the Peanuts Club in Bishopsgate and Ronnie Scott's Old Place.

By the mid-1960s he was the baritone saxophonist in Westbrook's band and soon doubled on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet. His first recording was with the Peter Lemer Quintet in 1966 (Local Colour, issued by ESP-Disk in 1968), followed by Westbrook's Deram albums Celebration (1967) and Release (1968). He also worked with Graham Collier, Alexis Korner, Michael Gibbs, Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and played on the guitarist John McLaughlin's first album as a leader, Extrapolation, recorded in London in January 1969. AllMusic reports that he was named best soloist at the 1968 Montreux Jazz Festival. His debut as a leader, John Surman (Deram, January 1969), gave one side to a calypso-jazz group he co-led with the Trinidadian pianist Russell Henderson and the other to his own writing for an eleven-piece band that included Osborne, Dave Holland, Harry Miller, Kenny Wheeler and the trumpeter Harry Beckett; How Many Clouds Can You See? followed in 1970.

In 1969 he formed The Trio with two American expatriates, bassist Barre Phillips and drummer Stu Martin. Because of work-permit problems for the Americans, the group spent much of its life on the European mainland; its five records, starting with The Trio (Dawn, 1970) and Conflagration (1971), helped earn it a place among the finest small jazz groups of its era. In 1970 he recorded Where Fortune Smiles with John McLaughlin, Dave Holland, Martin and the vibraphonist Karl Berger, and in 1971 he was the main soloist on Tales of the Algonquin, a set of compositions by his friend John Warren. After the pace of the Trio left him worn out he made Westering Home (Island, 1972), the first of his solo records on which he played every part himself by overdubbing, and in which synthesizers sit beside his love of English and Celtic folk melody. In the mid-1970s he, Osborne and the tenor saxophonist Alan Skidmore formed S.O.S., an all-saxophone group (Skidmore also played drums and Surman synthesizers) that in 1974 spent several months at the Paris Opera with the choreographer Carolyn Carlson on the ballet Sablier Prison. His 1973 Island album Morning Glory introduced the quartet of pianist John Taylor, bassist Chris Laurence and drummer John Marshall, with guests Terje Rypdal and Malcolm Griffiths, and his last album with Westbrook, Citadel/Room 315, came out in 1975.

Surman signed with ECM in late 1978 and has recorded for the label almost exclusively since. The first release was the solo Upon Reflection, recorded in May 1979 with saxophones, clarinets and synthesizers, followed by The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon (1981), a duo with Jack DeJohnette, Such Winters of Memory (recorded December 1982) with the singer Karin Krog and drummer Pierre Favre, and the solo albums Withholding Pattern (1985), Private City (1988) and Road to Saint Ives (recorded April 1990). He also appeared on ECM as a sideman with Barre Phillips, the guitarist Mick Goodrick, the bassist Miroslav Vitous and Paul Bley. Adventure Playground (recorded September 1991) paired him with Bley, Gary Peacock and the drummer Tony Oxley; The Brass Project (1993) put him and John Warren in front of a brass nonet and a rhythm section; and Stranger than Fiction (recorded December 1993) brought back the Taylor, Laurence and Marshall quartet. On June 1, 1996, at Salisbury Cathedral, he recorded Proverbs and Songs, choral settings of Old Testament texts for the 75-voice Salisbury Festival Chorus with John Taylor at the organ; the album came out in 1997 and was nominated for the 1998 Mercury Music Prize. In 1997 he joined the Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem and Dave Holland for the trio album Thimar (ECM, 1998).

His writing for unusual forces continued with Coruscating (recorded January 1999) for saxophones, bass and the Trans4mation string quartet, Free and Equal (live at Queen Elizabeth Hall, June 2001) for himself, Jack DeJohnette and the London Brass, and a second duo with DeJohnette, Invisible Nature (live, November 2000, issued 2002). With the singer John Potter he recorded the Dowland Project albums In Darkness Let Me Dwell (1999) and Care-Charming Sleep (2003), and with Krog he made Bluesand (1999) and Songs About This and That (2013), each of which won the Norwegian Spellemannprisen in the jazz category. Brewster's Rooster (recorded September 2007, released 2009) used a quartet of John Abercrombie, bassist Drew Gress and DeJohnette. The solo Saltash Bells (recorded June 2009, released 2012), which grew out of a collaboration with the Norwegian filmmaker and photographer Odd-Geir Sæther on the English West Country where Surman grew up, took the 2013 Jazz FM Award and the Parliamentary Jazz Award for album of the year.

Around his 70th birthday in 2014 he was resident in Norway, after living largely in continental Europe since the late 1960s. Invisible Threads (recorded July 2017, released January 2018) was a trio with the Brazilian pianist Nelson Ayres and the vibraphonist Rob Waring, produced by Manfred Eicher; in 2020 he issued Oceanic Rifts with his son Ben Surman on keyboards. Words Unspoken (ECM, February 2024), recorded in Oslo in December 2022 and released ahead of his 80th birthday, is a bassless quartet of Surman, Waring, the guitarist Rob Luft and the drummer Thomas Strønen. In 2025 the Cuneiform label issued Flashpoints and Undercurrents, a previously unreleased 1969 recording by a Surman tentet that included Skidmore, Ronnie Scott, Osborne and Kenny Wheeler, and Sunnyside released Cantica Profana and The Athenaeum Concert, trio recordings with the violist Mat Maneri and the pianist Lucian Ban.

Surman's playing is built on three voices: a deep, warm baritone saxophone, a light and folk-inflected soprano, and a dark bass clarinet. His composing often draws on English and Celtic folk melody and on landscape, and critics have called Saltash Bells quintessentially English. Road to Saint Ives (1990) takes its titles from Cornish places, and Saltash Bells (2012) returns to the West Country. He has been described as a composer of free jazz and modal jazz, and AllMusic lists post-bop, avant-garde jazz, jazz-rock, folk jazz and modern composition among his styles; he has also written for dance and film. He has made a series of one-man records built from overdubbed reeds and synthesizers, beginning with Westering Home (1972), and has worked in nearly every setting jazz allows, from trio and brass band to church organ with choir. His long ECM association with the producer Manfred Eicher placed him beside American players such as Jack DeJohnette, Paul Bley and John Abercrombie as well as British colleagues, and his early trio with Barre Phillips and Stu Martin has been cited as a model by later reed players: the Italian reed players Francesco Chiapperini and Enzo Favata both name him as an influence.