A man with a 1000 faces and a million sounds!
Few guys in the music world has such a versatile background as Tommy Denander.
A selftaught guitarist and keyboard player since the age of 5 he has played almost every style you can think of, both live and on more than 900 albums, 150 singles, 5000 sessions and several movie soundtracks including Gorillas In The Mist (Sigourney Weaver) and Code Baltic Storm (Donald Sutherland)

A short list of artists he has recorded on albums with -
TOTO, MICHAEL MCDONALD, BB KING, FEE WAYBILL, RICHARD MARX, DAVID FOSTER, BILL CHAMPLIN, BOBBY KIMBALL, FERGIE FREDERIKSEN, JEFF BECK, JIMMY PAGE , VINNIE COLAIUTA, STEVE VAI, CARLOS SANTANA, DANN HUFF, TONY FRANKLIN, MICHAEL LANDAU, JASON SCHEFF, RICHARD PAGE, MICHAEL THOMPSON, BRUCE GAITSCH, STEVE STEVENS, PAT THRALL, GLENN HUGHES, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, BILL CANTOS, DAN REED, JOEY TEMPEST, STEVE MORSE, REB BEACH, CHRISTOPHER CROSS, JEFF WATSON, BRUCE KULICK, MICK RONSON, TOMMY NILSSON, JIM JIDHED, STEFAN ANDERSSON, LIONS SHARE, TALISMAN, TALK OF THE TOWN, PRISONER, RAINMAKER and SAYIT....for more see below!

As a kid Tommy was just as much a fan of hard rock bands like Kiss, Van Halen, Whitesnake and Judas Priest as westcoast artists like David Foster, Toto, Bill Champlin and David Roberts or jazz players like Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour or classic music like....you get the picture. This mix is what inspired him at a very young age to start getting into doing sessions...
"I loved the idea to be able and play any style they ask of you on the spot in the studios" Tommy says.
He started doing sessions for friends demos when he was only 12 years old and made his first album at 14 with Swedish hard rockers ATC "Cut In Ice" (Polygram/Vertigo).

The media soon discovered this "kid who could play like Eddie Van Halen AND Eric Clapton!" and this of course only helped Tommy to get more work and quickly he was a part of the upper layer of players in Sweden...still only in his mid teens!

In 1987 he moved to Los Angeles where he spent three wonderful years.
This was a big learning period for Tommy, to find out if he could play with "the big boys" and the first people he got to know were TOTO. As this was mostly a watch and learn period, he did only a few sessions during his time in LA but the knowledge and contacts he gained are the reason why Tommy's name is getting well known around the world these days.

In 1988, on a short trip back to Sweden, Tommy was offered a record deal to make an instrumental solo album for big swedish label Sonet, their boss Ola Håkansson made him a simple deal - "write a bunch of songs and we'll record it right away!"
Tommy wrote and made demos of some 15 songs in one month and then came to the wise conclusion that he wasn't ready to do this yet!, he told Ola

- "Eventhough it would be amazing to do this at the age of 20 i only get one chance to do my solo debut and it should be better than this so i'll wait!".

Ola agreed but impressed with what he heard on the demos he offered Tommy a job as one of the chief engineers at Sonet Studios, a top class studio in the world...but already set on returning to his new home in Los Angeles Tommy declined eventough he had serious doubts about missing a chance like this.

Back in Sweden he opened his first professional recording studio - Noble House.
Tommy has always been equally interested in writing music as the whole craft of producing and recording it so the next logical step was to become a studio owner.
Trying too hard to manage a growing list of high demands like running the studio, doing sessions in other studios, several big tours and keeping a social life Tommy burnt himself out and in 1993 he had a major collapse!
Life changed overnight and even now more than 8 years later Tommy is still not well.

"I'm slowly getting back there but it's still a long way to go" - Tommy says.

In 1994 he felt that he was finally ready to do that solo album but being a fan of so many kinds of music...what style should it be?
He started writing a lot of songs and found himself with ballads, pop ideas and even harder progressive songs so he came up with this wild idea to do 10! solo albums in 5 years, each with it's own style, blues, rock, soft, jazz etc and release them two at the time!!!

So for the first 2 he decided on one with only soft ballads and emotional songs called -

Less Is More (Part One)

and the other one a much harder and more progressive rock album almost in the style off Dream Theater called -

Skeleton (Part Two)

A promo CD called "Less Is More & Skeleton" was made for the media in only 500 copies and is now an rare collectable

Less Is More & Skeleton (Promo)

Both albums were released on the same day in the fall of 1995 and earned Tommy great aclaim in the media all over the world, this was his first "foot print" to show his talent on a wider scale.
As far as we know it's also the first time ever that an artist makes his debut with 2 different albums released at the same time!!!
Less Is More was also the first album to feature a song from the recordings he made with TOTO in 1991, the song "5492" is a 10 minute fusion/blues that he wrote with Jeff and Mike Porcaro and the title is in honor of Jeff's memory 1954-92, it also featuers David Paich on keyboards and there's some amazing playing between them all so check it out if you can.
He quickly started to work on part 3 and 4 but two reasons put a stop to this idea forever, one it was too much work and money involved to market and promote two albums and second his name had spread so fast after the first two albums that offers to work with many other interesting projects took over.

One that will forever stand out for Tommy is the second solo album by Fee Waybill called "Don't Be Scared By These hands".
Tommy met american top session guitarist Bruce Gaitsch through a japanese website and they traded albums with each other and quickly became friends.
In the spring of 1996 Bruce was writing and co-producing Fee's album with Richard Marx and when they needed a "flashy" guitar solo Tommy was asked!, he tells the story himself -

- "I've always had Fee's first solo album Read My Lips as a top five album of all the albums i've heard in my life and to be asked to be a part of the follow up together with people like Gaitsch, Marx, Steve Lukather, Randy Jackson, Jonathan Moffet and of course Fee himself ranks as one of the five best things in my life"

This album together with his solo albums did a great job of spreading Tommy's name around the world and definently helped in many ways to start the last years of work on his Radioactive album.
The album had been put on hold for a long time mostly due to illness but lack of both money and inspiration held it back further but now the time was starting to feel right again.

Since 1997 Tommy's been the main man behind several aclaimed projects and new bands like Sayit, Prisoner and Rainmaker as well as writing, playing and producing a major part of the "comeback" album for swedish AOR legends Talk Of The Town and the great duet album with buddy Bruce Gaitsch (Madonna, Richard Marx) called "Counterparts" with Bill Champlin from Chicago singing!

Sayit is one of Tommy's best friends and when he asked for help making his first album simply called "Sayit" in 1999 Tommy provided songs and production aid as well as playing most instruments, the CD is now a hot item for westcoast and AOR collectors. A second album was released in september 2001 called "Again".

Tommy is also a member of the two critically aclaimed bands Prisoner and Rainmaker.
He started Prisoner with song writing buddy Ricky Delin in 1997 and together with the two fantastic singers Geir Rönning and Pierre Wensberg they released their highly praised first album "Blind" in the begining of 2000 in Europe and Japan.