Bjorn Thoroddsen

Björn Thoroddsen is an Icelandic guitarist. Originally a rock musician, he later focused on jazz. In his youth, Thoroddsen studied guitar in Iceland. He later attended the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, California, graduating in 1982. Thoroddsen has released a number of albums. He has also won several awards in Iceland including being the Jazz performer of the year at the Icelandic Music Awards in 2003, Jazz composer of the year 2005, the city artist of the year in Reykjavik in 2000 and the city artist of Gardabaer in 2002. Björn's band Guitar Islancio was also the first band in Iceland to receive a gold record for a jazz record in 2003. Björn has collaborated with many musicians during his career such as Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Kazumi Watanabe, Tommy Emmanuel, Robin Nolan, Philip Catherine, Didier Lockwood, Jørgen Svare and others. Today Björn plays mostly as a solo guitarist but has performed with numerous bands. In 2007 Björn founded the Icelandic Guitar Festival, an annual event which has been televised in Iceland. In 2013, Björn organized a similar festival dedicated to guitarists, Guitarama, in Canada and again in 2014. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Björn_T...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)