JLT
Biography JLT
Johan Leijonhufvud
is a renowned Swedish jazz guitarist living in Berlin, Germany, whose elegant, fluid lines and highly melodic bebop style has situated him within a tradition of jazz guitar greats like Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery and John Scofield. He was born in 1971 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and grew up in Växjö, Sweden, and learned to play piano at the age of nine and guitar at the age of eleven. One of the earliest formative musical experiences of young Leijonhufvud’s life was hearing Cannonball Adderly’s Things Are Getting Better on his parent’s record player. In 1988 Leijonhufvud moved to Skåne, in southern Sweden to study at Skurups Folkhögskola, the folk school that would become famous as an educational and social incubator for some of the finest jazz musicians in Europe. After two years at Skurups Folkhögskola, Leijonhufvud moved to Malmö and started The Johan Leijonhufvud Trio in 1991, who released their first album Speaks The Local Bebop (1993) with Mattias Hjorth on bass and Kristofer Johansson on drums, followed by a quartet album Happy Farm (1996), two more trio records Eurolines (2001), Strange Man (2006), and a solo album entitled Mighty Mezz Vol. 1 (2014). In 2021, The Johan Leijonhufvud Trio joined the Heartcore Records family and released Harlem Nocturne, with bassist Johnny Åman and drummer Niclas Campagnol. Their latest release is Nifty Fifty (2023), a beautiful collection of songs written in Leijonhufvud’s family’s 200 year old home in the Swedish countryside. In addition to his work as a bandleader, Leijonhufvud is also a prolific session musician and sideman, having played and recorded with notable artists such as Benny Bailey, Mark Murphy, Svante Thuresson, Anders Bergcrantz, Esbjörn Svensson, Nils Landgren, Victoria Tolstoy, Claes Jansson, David Haynes, Kjell Öhman, Berndt Rosengren, and Max Schultz. He has a decades long musical relationship with German trumpeter Till Brönner, who is one of the most famous jazz trumpeters in Germany. By his own admission, Leijonhufvud cannot read music, which at first seems at odds with modern jazz’s history of academically inclined musicians. Since he was a child, Leijonhufvud has been a deep listener, and his musical education comes from a lifetime of listening to music and playing straight from his heart. As audiences all over the world can plainly hear, Leijonhufvud is one of jazz’s brightest players, and his musicality and facility on the guitar has allowed him to tour and perform as a bandleader and as a sideman all over the world, including in several major clubs and festivals such as Montreux Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Nice Jazz Festival, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Ronnie Scott’s (London), Blue Note Milano, London Jazz Cafe, Jamboree (Barcelona), Berlin Philharmonie, Auditorium Parco Della Musica (Rome) and Pizza Express (London). His warm spirit and friendly demeanor belie the breadth of his immense talent on the guitar, and his performances and recordings are rewarding listening for any music fan.
