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 2024 Rødovre Musikpris and the 2023 Fair Practice Prize from the Danish Composers’ Society. In 2021 Jonas got the Artist Award of The Danish Music Critics’ Association and the opportunity of an Artist 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 34 solo and chamber pieces from leading Danish and international composers, and Jonas’ 2024-25 project Barndommens Land (Land of Childhood) will feature another seven 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, that year with the title Once Upon… Curiosity. In V Coloris they during 2023 also organised a concert series in Copenhagen with the title 5Concerts to exlplore the potential that the Copenhagen bus line 5C has as culture guide. 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, concert series in autumn 2025 centered around the first performances of Bent Sørensens new Clarinet Quintet comissioned by Jonas and Nightingale String Quartet in venues less known for concerts with classical music and three musical-literary Shrovetide events for 2025 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). SOLO ALONE AND MORE was selected CD of the Week in the German music magazine Klassik Heute accompanied by a 10 / 10 / 10 score review, and in relation to the release Jonas was featured in Gramophone Music Magazine’s One to Watch. Similarly as a result of the release of SOLO ALONE AND MORE Jonas was in November 2023 New Artist of the Month in the American music magazine Musical America. 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 (Dacapo Records) recorded together with the Quatuor Diotima. For full discography go to menu of this website, and for all reviews related to SOLO ALONE AND MORE please visit www.ourrecordings.com.

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 heacquired in 2023 a C. G. Conn Tenor Saxophone from 1927 that is the sixth member in his collection of instruments otherwise counting Buffet Crampon A, B, Basset and Bass clarinets plus a duduk (traditional Armenian wind instrument) 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 from the Birkhave Foundation

Artist Prize from the Danish Music Critics’ Association

Rødovre Prisen from the Municipality of Rødovre, Denmark, and their big mall — Rødovre Centrum

Fair Practice Prize from the Danish Composers’ Society

Anker Buch Prisen