Awarded the National Scholarship Award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music four consecutive years, Swedish / Greek guitarist Ioannis Theodoridis’ concert appearances include Wigmore Hall, Stockholm Concert House and Barbican Centre. In 2018 he received Sweden’s biennial guitar award, the Jörgen Rörby Prize.
He performs solo and together with What Guitar Trio which specialises in contemporary music, premiering 5 pieces for the 840 contemporary music series in 2019 along with several UK premieres of music for guitar trio by Beat Furrer, Per Nørgård, Anna Eriksson and more. The trio have performed at Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, National Portrait Gallery, and King’s Place, selected for the International Guitar Foundation’s Young Artist Platform. As a soloist he has performed several world premieres, including the premiere of Argentinean composer Maximo Diego Pujol’s piece Upptango at the 2011 Uppsala Guitar Festival which was recorded and broadcast by Swedish Radio P2. In the UK, his performances and productions have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM.
Ioannis studied at Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland, with Lorenzo Micheli, as a scholar of the Helge Ax:son Johnson’s Foundation after his masters studies at the Royal College of Music in London as a scholar of the Gålö and Helge Ax:son Johnson’s Foundation. In 2016 he won first prize in the Alison Stephens Competition at the Trinity Laban Conservatory where he is studied on an Advanced Diploma programme as a scholar of the Kempe-Carlgrenska Fund, Täby Kommun, Helge Ax:son Johnson’s Foundation, and Gålö Foundation. For the latter, he performed at the prestigious Stockholm Concert House in 2016. Since 2014, Ioannis plays on a Simon Marty Concert Guitar generously funded by the Anders Sandrews Foundation, and on a Per Hallgren guitar from 2018.
As a research fellow at NMH in Oslo, he researches common physical difficulties of musicians, how musicians and institutions talk about and conceptualise physical difficulties of playing, and how related movement dysfuntions can impact instrumentalists coordination and abilities. He studied pedagogy at Kristianstad University, psychology at the MidUniversity of Sweden, physiology at Skövde University, and performance health and wellbeing at the RCM in London. He has taught and lectured at the Guitar Foundation of America Convention, Brussels Royal Conservatory, TU Dublin Conservatoire, European Guitar Teachers Association, Nyköping Guitar Seminars, Swedish Guitar and Lute Festival, Uppsala International Guitar Festival and Corde D’Autunno in Milan. His writings on music have also been published in music journals, among them his writings on Lennox Berkeley's guitar music, published in the Lennox Berkeley Society Journal 2015. In 2017 he was awarded the Lennox Berkeley Guitar Award, and organises projects for the FRC Recording Group in London and works part time as a cinematographer for classical music videos.
"A natural flow and style" - Classical Guitar Magazine 2017
"Sensitive, nuanced... showing precision and elegance" - Lennox Berkeley Guitar Award 2017
Ioannis' main teachers have been Lorenzo Micheli (CSI), Graham Devine (Trinity), Chris Stell and Charles Ramirez (RCM), Peter Berlind Carlson (KMH), Bo Hansson (Södra Latin's Gymnasium), and Rasmus Holmgren (Täby Kulturskola).
Specially thanks the following for their much appreciated support: The Gålö Foundation, the Helge Ax:son Johnson's Foundation, Täby Kommun, the Kempe-Carlgrenska Fund, Larsson and Althainz Fund, E Johnson Fund, M & O Josephsson Fund, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and Anders Sandrews Foundation.