Tuomas Holopainen | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Tuomas Lauri Johannes Holopainen |
Born | 25 December 1976 |
Origin | Kitee, Finland |
Genres | Symphonic metal, power metal, gothic metal |
Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter, producer |
Instruments | Keyboards, synthesizer, piano, vocals, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, bass, drums, percussion |
Years active | 1992 – present |
Labels | Spinefarm, Nuclear Blast, Roadrunner, Century Media, Drakkar Entertainment |
Associated acts | Nightwish, For My Pain..., Timo Rautiainen, Indica, Darkwoods My Betrothed, Tony Kakko, Johanna Kurkela |
Website | Tuomas-Holopainen.com Official Website |
Tuomas Lauri Johannes Holopainen (born 25 December 1976) is a Finnish songwriter, multi-instrumentalist musician (but mainly keyboardist) and record producer, best known as the founder, leader, keyboardist and songwriter of symphonic metal band Nightwish. He has also studied jazz and classical styles, but prefers to be influenced by harmonic film music.
He has also played in the bands Nattvindens Gråt and Darkwoods My Betrothed, and collaborated with the gothic metal band For My Pain... and the band of Timo Rautiainen.
Holopainen has written several songs that have been included in movie soundtracks, including a collaboration with Nightwish bass player, and male vocalist Marco Hietala on "While Your Lips Are Still Red", for the Finnish film Lieksa! in 2007. He also co-wrote the music for Nightwish's own film, Imaginaerum, released in November 2012.
Holopainen released his first solo album Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge in 2014.
Tuomas Holopainen was born in Kitee, Finland, on 25 December 1976. His parents were entrepreneur Pentti Holopainen and Kirsti Nortia-Holopainen, a former music and English teacher in a small elementary school. He has an older sister named Susanna who works as a surgeon-urologist, and an older brother named Petri who is an autopsy assistant. His musicality and skill in text expression showed early in school. His mother signed him up for piano class in school when he was seven years old, and he later studied clarinet, tenor saxophone, piano and music theory for twelve years at a music college. However, he has not played the clarinet nor the saxophone since the mid-nineties. Originally aspiring to be a biologist, Holopainen had no interest in metal until his school foreign exchange partner took him to see Metallica and Guns N' Roses in America, and he became hooked.