Real name: Eero Kaarle Ojanen

Finnish composer, conductor and jazz pianist, born 3 January 1943 in Helsinki, Finland.
Eero Ojanen is largely self-taught as a musician. Having started as a jazz musician in the early 1960s, Ojanen played and recorded with a number of the most important Finnish jazz groups during the 1960s, including the Juhani Vilkki Sextet and Quartet, the Pekka Pöyry Quartet and the Otto Donner Treatment. He also frequently worked as a free-lance musician, including appearances with saxophonists Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon and Johnny Griffin. Ojanen started his career as a theater composer and musician already in the late 1960s composing the music for a number of plays and cabarets directed by Bengt Ahlfors for Lilla Teatern in Helsinki. From 1973 until 1980, Ojanen served as a full-time conductor, composer and pianist at KOM Theater, an experimental theater group that was hugely influential during Ojanen´s tenure there and continues to be one of the most highly regarded independent theaters in Finland. After 1980, Ojanen´s cooperation with KOM Theater has continued but he has also composed music for a number of plays and movies outside of that affiliation. Altogether, he has composed the music for over 50 plays, including classics such as A Midsummer Night´s Dream in 1991, Cyrano de Bergerac in 1993 and Of Mice and Men in 2004. In addition, Ojanen has composed three full-length ballets, including a ballet based on the Finnish classic Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi in 1980, and a number of other larger works. Although Ojanen continued to play jazz all through the 1970s and 1980s, in 1991, he returned to improvised music on a more regular basis by starting again his collaboration with Teppo Hauta-aho and, in 1995, co-founding Trio Nueva Finlandia with Hauta-aho and saxophonist/flutist Seppo Paakkunainen. For his work, Ojanen has received a number of awards, including the Yrjö Award for the Finnish jazz musician of the year in 1969, the Jussi Award for best film music for Haaveiden kehä in 2002 and the Finnish State´s Artist´s Pension for a lifetime of artistic achievement in 2004.