Jonas Frølund (b.1996 in Roskilde) is a versatile young Danish clarinetist and entrepreneur educated from the Paris Conservatoire in 2022 and currently pursuing a career as soloist and chamber musician besides his important engagements in The Danish Chamber Orchestra as Principal Clarinet and Chairman and in the rising wind quintet V Coloris as clarinetist and co-founder. 

During his student years Jonas obtained among others 1st prize in the 5th Lisbon International Clarinet Competition 2019 and an Honorary Mention in the Prague Spring International Music Competition 2022, and other recent acknowledgements count the 2021 Award from The Danish Music Critics’ Association and the opportunity of an Artist’s Choice on BBC Radio 3 in May 2023.

Chamber music-wise Jonas frequently collaborates with internationally acclaimed musicians such as The Danish String Quartet, Trio con Brio Copenhagen, Aleksander Sitkovetsky, Marianna Shirinyan, Torleif Thedéen, Andreas Brantelid and Bjarke Mogensen, and via his relationship to conductor Pierre Bleuse he took in 2023 part in the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades, France. As a soloist he has performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Danish Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ádám Fischer, the Carl Stamitz concerto no. 4 with the baroque orchestra Arte dei Suonatori, and the Carl Nielsen Clarinet Concerto with the National Danish Youth Ensemble (DUEN).

Jonas is highly dedicated to contemporary music and works frequently with prominent Danish composers such as Lil Lacy, Mette Nielsen, Birgitte Alsted, Bent Sørensen, Hans Abrahamsen, Poul Ruders, Rune Glerup, Matias Vestergård, and Jesper Koch. So far Jonas has premiered 24 solo and chamber pieces from leading Danish and international composers, and Jonas’ 2024 project Barndommens Land (Land of Childhood) will feature another eight premieres of solo pieces by Danish composers including some of the above listed.

In October 2023 Jonas and his friends in V Coloris organised for the second year in a row their Once Upon… chamber music festival in Copenhagen, this year with the title Once Upon… Curiosity. In V Coloris they are during 2023 also organising a concert series in Copenhagen with the title 5Concerts. Among Jonas’ other ongoing projects are release of sound of and sheet music (Eidition Wilhelm Hansen) for Per Nørgård’s important work Spell (1973) in a new version (2023) worked out by Jonas and colleagues in his Trio Spell and two musical-literary Shrovetide events for 2024 with commissioned pieces by composer Birgitte Alsted.

SOLO ALONE AND MORE, an album released on August 11, 2023, on OUR Recordings, is Jonas Frølund’s debut solo album and the second release in collaboration with OUR following the critically acclaimed Poul Ruders album recorded together with Rudersdal Chamber Soloists (2022). Jonas is equally featured on the recent Dacapo Records release Frozen Moments and among the upcoming releases is the Clarinet Quintet plus String Quartet no. 1 by Rune Glerup recorded together with the Quatuor Diotima. 

These years Jonas is opening up more and more towards other genres and has just  begun a collaboration with the Nordic folk music trio Stundom. Equally he has recently acquired a C. G. Conn Tenor Saxophone from the 1920’s that is the sixth member in his collection of instruments otherwise counting Buffet Crampon A, B, Basset and Bass clarinets plus a duduk in F major/D minor.

SPECIAL THANKS TO the grantors who have generously granted me the following prizes and awards during my career so far:

Amdrup Talent Prize of the Music Society of Roskilde

Betty and Valdemar van Hauen’s Prize

Léonie Sonning’s Talent Prize

Jacob Gades Legat

Danish Radio P2 Talent Prize

Copenhagen Summer Festival Talent Prize

Copenhagen Phil Development Prize

Birkhave-Prisen

Artist A from the Danish Music Critics’ Association

Music Prize of the Municipality of Rødovre

The Fair Practice Prize of the Danish Composers’ Society