Niklas Winter is a jazz guitarist and composer born in Turku, Finland. He has made nine albums as a leader and many more as a co-leader and sideman, having recorded with Kenny Wheeler, Lars Jansson, Henry Lowther, Severi Pyysalo and many others. Winter studied classical guitar at the Turku Conservatory during 1985-1990 and later, at Berklee College of Music in the mid-’90s. Collaborations include guitar duos with Jesse Van Ruller, Ulf Wakenius, John Stowell, Søren Lee, Libor Smoldas, Lorenzo Cominoli, Teemu Viinikainen and with vibraphonist Severi Pyysalo and with flutist Mark Lotz and trumpeter Henry Lowther. Band projects include Niklas Winter Quartet, Winter’s Jazz Workshop and a collaboration with Henry Lowther and the Utopia Chamber Choir in Winter’s Graduale project. Winter has played concerts with the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra in productions with Kiri Te Kanawa and in Mikko Heiniö’s Opera, Erik XIV. He has performed at the London Jazz Festival, The Union Chappell in London, Pori Jazz Festival, Tampere Jazz Festival, Copenhagen and Aarhus Jazz Festivals, Orta and Nuoro Jazz Festivals, Turku Jazz and Turku Music Festival, Viapori Jazz Festival, Katedraali Soi!, Sacred Music Festival, Yokohama Jazz Promenade, Juhla Tokyo Festival, Beijing Contemporary Music Festival and the Bohemia Jazz Fest, to name a few. Since the year 2000, Winter has also composed music for television documentaries for the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. Niklas has been a guitar instructor for some 25 years in Novia and Jyväskylä and Oulu Universities of Applied Sciences until spring 2023. Now he works as a freelancer musician doing concerts and workshops around the globe.