Tuomas Holopainen

Tuomas Holopainen was born in Kitee, Finland and is the youngest in his family. His musicality and skill in text expression showed early in school, especially when he took piano lessons at age seven and studied jazz and classical music styles for over 10 years at a music college. Holopainen joined his first bands in 1993. He played in several bands, including recording keyboards for three albums with black metal band Darkwoods My Betrothed and playing with Dismal Silence, Nattvindens Gråt and Sethian. In July 1996, Holopainen began thinking of starting a band of his own, for which he would write the music and play keyboards. This was the birth of Nightwish, around a camp fire. He asked Emppu Vuorinen (guitar) and classmate Tarja Turunen (vocals) to join what was then an acoustic project. After hearing Turunen's strong voice, and because of the metal influences of Vuorinen and drummer Jukka Nevalainen, Tuomas decided to turn Nightwish into a metal act. He and Nightwish didn't break thro