Emil Jonason grew up listening to Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Kenny Davern and especially the notorious Spike Jones and his City Slickers. He took up the clarinet at the age of ten – his mother signed him up for the instrument with the shortest waiting list at the local music school – and he was soon playing everything from wind bands to jazz, klezmer and more. The classical world he discovered properly at sixteen, a period when he was touring with several klezmer bands to Kraków, Prague and festivals in Sweden, and a year later he was accepted to the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. In 2005 Emil Jonason won a competition for young soloists (Solofonipriset) and was given the opportunity to perform Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto with the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, and at his diploma concert two years later he played the concerto by John Corigliano with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. Nominated a Rising Star by the European Concert Hall Organisation in 2009, Emil Jonason received invitations to the Vienna Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle, Cité de la Musique in Paris and other prestigious European concert venues. In 2012 he gained further international recognition, performing as soloist at the Nobel Prize Ceremony, and in 2013 he made his US début with an appearance at the legendary Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, at the invitation of Marin Alsop. Emil Jonason currently enjoys a varied career, touring as a soloist and teaching at the Stockholm Royal College of Music and at the Bachelor Programme in Chamber Music of the Mälardalen University, Västerås. www.emiljonason.se
