Tuomas Holopainen was born on December 25^th 1976. in a land of thousand lakes, Finland. It was a birth of a prodigious mind, a birth of an Ocean Soul. Even as a child he was very complicated personality, and main event from childhood, as he says, are his affection for Disney characters and imagination which this production created, and second main event is the moment he read Lord of the Rings.

Those events maybe the ones which will define his future. Considering he became Tolkien fan in the age of 7, it’s not a surprise he has a great passion for fantasy stuffs. He was smart as a boy, and he learned some things faster and he was always ahead his matches; the bigger part of his teenage period he was a “lost boy”. His music career starts at the age of 7 when his mother signed him on piano classes. In music school he was managing better on clarinet than on piano.

He knows the basics of music theories, can read notes and follows with piano. While he was in the army he was playing clarinet for nine and a half months, and after that he never played it again. First band which brought him some progress was band entitled Darkwoods my Bethrothed (he recorded one release with them in 1995). Approximately at that time he composed his first song, outro for band Heirs of Northstar, and the outro was titled “A New Heaven A New Earth”. Last band he worked with was Nattvindens Grat. In these bands Tuomas was just a studio session musician and he never had a chance to write his own songs, which didn’t bother him at the beginning. But the lust for writing his own lyrics, his thoughts, was growing and eventually he decided to create his own project.

It was a night at the campfire under the stars of North when many wishes become true. Tuomas wanted to make a project with slow music, acoustic guitar, piano, flute and female vocals. Tuomas, together with Emppu, went to his friend from high school, Tarja Turunen. Tarja and Tuomas were together in a high school jazz band in which Tarja was a vocal and Tuomas played clarinet. Tarja agreed to Tuomas proposal and they went to studio to make project Nightwish. Jukka joined the band and first demo “Nightwish” was released. Soon after that Tuomas wanted to do a metal project so Emppu played electric guitar instead of acoustic. The new era of Tuomas’ live has begun, life full of journeys, beautiful, emotive, fantasy songs and big concerts.

With each album Tuomas was developing his poetry skills, and the song he calls his masterpiece is “Dead Boy’s Poem” – a tribute to his poetry heart. After “Wishmaster” album and tour which followed it, Tuomas decided to end with this band because of different complication within the band. With his friend Tonni (Sonata Arctica) he went to forests of Lappland in search for himself. And he succeeded to find himself and Nightwish in his life. He calls members of the band and continues the work with Nightwish, but under one condition, Sami had to leave the band because he was the one who tears the band and Tuomas just couldn’t continue with him. Long after that he gets into personal crisis because of the separation with his girlfriend. As a result he creates one of the most complex and most emotive Nightwish albums – “Century Child”.

After great success of the Century Child, he started with writing for the next album. For “Once” album he hired symphonic orchestra and he wrote the music for it. Seeing he cannot continue with his bandmate Tarja Turunen he expressed wish to part ways with her for the good of the band. This happened at the end of “Once” tour in an open letter which was published on their web page. There are many reasons, but the main one is that he realized on this tour he don’t want to end Nightwish story yet as Tarja did. As he said “I will write music and lyrics for Nightwish as long as I have the inspiration…” So let it be!