Thomas Toivonen
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Thomas Toivonen is a Sweden-Finnish free jazz guitarist and a multi-instrumentalist whose improvisational method is heavily influenced by Lennie Tristano and his followers in New York.
Thomas was born in Skutskar, Sweden by Finnish immigrants in 1974. They moved from there when Thomas was an infant and during his entire life Thomas Toivonen has moved so many times that he sometimes jokingly refers to himself as a nomad.
When he was eleven years old he started to teach himself how to play the guitar that he got as a Christmas gift from his father. The following years Thomas Toivonen played in numerous bands with varying styles like heavy metal, indie rock and reggae where he shifted between the guitar, bass, keyboard and drums, instruments that he was mainly self-taught[1] on.
In the late 90s Thomas Toivonen started to get interested in jazz and studied jazz improvisation with jazz-guitarist Andy Fite in Stockholm for some years. He has also taken some lessons with Andy’s teacher Connie Crothers, a student of Lennie Tristano, in New York.
Thomas is also playing with the Swedish drummer and actor Iggy Malmborg in the duo Kaburu [2], where their improvisational method are based on extended techniques and are influenced by the European free improvisation scene[3].
Thomas Toivonen is not very well known but he has achieved some international recognition like when his music was played on the radio show Taran's Free Jazz Hour [4], in Angers, France, the radio show Now's the time with Kevin LeGendre [5] (on the London based non-profit community radio station Resonance FM) and when the music of Kaburu was played on Anarchy Radio with John Zerzan in Eugene, Oregon, whom both Thomas Toivonen and Iggy Malmborg share their political views and critique of civilization with.
Instead of the traditional way of releasing music on CD Thomas has, both with Kaburu and other projects he’s been involved with, released music in mp3 format on the internet.
In 2007 Thomas Toivonen made, together with some friends, a movie called Dead Society [6] which is based on an interview with John Zerzan. The movie argues against industrial society, factories, animal experimentation, “green” technologies such as wind-power, and the left. It is, as Thomas music, available to download for free on the internet.
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Thomas Toivonen
