Joe Tollefsen was born and raised in South Carolina, where he began his studies with guitarist Marina Alexandra. Joe went on to win numerous prizes throughout high school, including 1st place in the ECU Youth Guitar competition and 1st place in the Southern Guitar Festival Youth Competition. He was invited to play on the NPR radio program “From the Top” in his senior year of high school, after which he began his collegiate studies, entering the double degree program at Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Institute of Music, where he studied creative writing and classical guitar.

            Joe has performed extensively throughout his career, including at four TedX programs, as well as a recent tour of Thailand and Vietnam with the Yale Guitar Studio, and a chamber performance at the Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts. He has won prizes in many national competitions including the Connecticut Guitar Competition (2024), the Philadelphia Guitar Competition (2023), and the Louisville Guitar Festival (2021). He has served as a competition judge at the Marisol University Guitar Festival (2024), and the Saigon International Guitar Festival (2024).

            Among Joe’s many musical projects has been the building of cigar box guitars, which he sold under the business name “Outside the Box Guitars.” He has also written and recorded music, and played in a number of ensembles, most recently including duos with bass, oboe, and flute. He has appeared in the New Music New Haven concert series in 2023 and 2024, the Yale Lunchtime concert series (2022-2024), and the Music in Midtown concert series (2024).

            Joe has wide-ranging teaching experience; for three consecutive years, he was assistant teacher at Heathsville School summer guitar camps, where he would give group and individual lessons. Most recently, he has taught secondary lessons at Yale University, as well as in the Music in Schools program. He currently teaches privately in Brooklyn, New York.

     Joe has taken masterclasses and lessons with many of the great classical guitarists of our time, including Marcin Dylla, David Russell, Sergio Assad, Jason Vieaux, Judicael Perroy, and Xavier Jara. He recently graduated with a masters degree from the Yale School of Music, and is now pursuing a doctorate as a Graduate Center Fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center with guitarist and composer Fred Hand.