Jens Ola Johansson, a Swedish power-metal keyboardist and pianist was born November 2, 1963 in Stockholm. His high-speed, neoclassical, and fusion style are notable. Johansson is the son of Jan Johansson, a Swedish jazz pianist, and Anders Johansson, a heavy metal drummer. Johansson is influenced greatly by classic Rock keyboardists such as Don Airey and Eddie Jobson. Johansson, a classically trained musician, left Slem’s jazz fusion band in 1982 to join the Swedish metal band Silver Mountain. This band also included Anders. He left Sweden in 1983 to join guitarist Yngwie malmsteen’s band, Rising Force. He was a part of numerous world tours and records that followed, and he remained with Yngwie until 1989. Johansson was also a member of Dio from 1989 to 1990. He began a collaboration with Jonas Hellborg, just like Anders, in 1989. This resulted in several avant-garde and progressive recordings including Dissident, Silent Run (an album featuring an acoustic trio with Ginger Baker on drums), and E. Johansson also co-founded The Johansson Brothers in 1993. They recorded a self-titled album. With a new line-up in 1996, Sonic Winter was recorded. Yngwie Malmsteen joined them on guitar. The Last Viking, an album that is more European-oriented than the Johansson records, was released in 1999 by Johansson with special guests Goran Edman and Michael Romeo. Johansson released many instrumental solo records, including Fjaderlosa Tvafotingar and Ten Seasons, which was a piano solo album that was improvised in Mark Kostabi’s gallery, New York, Heavy Machinery (with Anders) and Fission (with Shawn Lane, Mike Stern), as well as collaborations with other artists and metal compilations, and Mastermind, the Berends Brothers band. Heptagon Records was founded by him to distribute his recordings as well as those of other musicians like Magnus Rosen and guitarist Benny Jansson. Johansson auditioned to Dream Theater in 1994 after Kevin Moore quit the band. However, due to delays in the band’s decision making process, he opted for Finnish Power Metal band Stratovarius. He has remained with Stratovarius since 1995, and continues to release solo albums as well as appearing as a session musician or guest musician in other projects. Jens is a self-confessed computer geek. He admits to having started with an Atari ST (which still he owns) and has coded software in C as well as his own website written in Perl. Wikipedia
