Quick Facts
Biography
Thomas Toivonen is a Sweden-Finnish musician, independent filmmaker and activist.
Thomas was born in Skutskär, 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 on.
In the late 1990s, Thomas Toivonen started to get interested in jazz and studied jazz improvisation in Stockholm for some years. He has also taken some lessons with Connie Crothers, a student of Lennie Tristano, in New York.
Thomas Toivonen has achieved some international recognition when his music was played on the radio show Taran's Free Jazz Hour, in Angers, France, the radio show Now's the time with Kevin LeGendre (on the London based non-profit community radio station Resonance FM)
Instead of the traditional way of releasing music on CD Thomas has, with the projects he’s been involved with, released music in mp3 format on the internet.
In 2007 Thomas Toivonen was involved in a filmproject,where he participated in making the movie called Dead Society 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.
The same year Thomas Toivonen appeared in the second edition of the Czech encyclopedia: Svět jiné hudby (The World of Another Music) by Zdeněk Slabý.
In the spring of 2008 Thomas Toivonen was photographed in Paris, France by the American art photographer Ralph Gibson for his exhibition and book: State of the Axe: Guitar Masters in Photographs and Words (2008)
In December 2011, Thomas released two ebooks. The first: "A reality beyond art"is a filosophical essay taking a critical look on the concept of art. And the other: "Intuitive jazz-improvisation"based on the experiences Thomas have made about learning and intuition as a musical autodidact, the problems with music-schools and (according to him) a "teaching methodology that is based on joy and freedom".
A second anti-civilization film named anOther Story Of Progresswas released by Thomas Toivonen in May, 2012. In this film Thomas goes deeper into the ideas and civilization critique of green anarchism by interviewing John Zerzan, Layla AbdelRahim as well as others.
In September, 2013, he released a documentary film named Truká - In the name of the Enchantedsand it is about the Truká people, in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, that live on islands on the São Francisco river and their struggle against a controversial water diversion project.