Geir Rønning

I was born in Ålesund Norway in November 5th 1962. I have been a professional singer for about 15 years now. During these years I have done all kinds of music and many kinds of shows. From solo acts with just a guitar to “Rhapsody in Rock” is in many ways miles apart, but in the heart of music there is room for it all.

Here is a short story of what I have done.

I am the proud winner of the Finnish Eurovision 2005 with the great ballad “Why”. We did not qualify to the final in Kiev, but a dream came true later that year when I sang in The Royal Albert Hall in London. I am the singer of the official song “Victory” in 2005 IAAF World Championship in Helsinki. That song gave me the unforgettable journey to the casino in Monaco and performing the song live in front of all the leaders and stars of IAAF track and field including Prince Albert of Monaco. And I sang it in the opening and closing ceremony of the World Championship.

I got my own show “The Geir Rönning Show” at the international Casino in Helsinki in 2006 and 2007. In 2006 we had great fun doing “Abba in Symphony” in Sandefjord, Norway, Tommy Körberg, Trine Rein, Maarja and I. During the last few years I have had the great pleasure of being on tour in many countries with Maestro Robert Wells and his fantastic “Rhapsody in Rock”. But hey.. I am still hungry!! I hope to see you out there.

If you want to know more details then just keep on going down this page and it goes on and on and on :)

Best Regards
Geir

I moved to Stockholm in the late eighties and that’s when my music life got the big kick! Stockholm is and will always have a big piece of my heart. The first couple of friends I got in Stockholm was Bernt Söderberg and Raymond Borgfeldt. We started recording the songs that Bernt and I wrote. The project was called Miracle, and at the end we ended up in Buffalo New York and Los Angeles.

Raymond is the reason why I meat Rory Kapland which was the keyboard player of Michael Jackson and Janet at the time. Raymond did some studio work for Rory, and he asked him to try to work with me some time. We had a great time and it ended up with Rory fixing me some tickets to a Toto gig at the Globe in Stockholm the year after.

That’s when I met one of my best friends in life, John “JJ” Jessel, the magic “right hand” of another dear friend, David Paich. I will never forget that night, cause it ended up with me singing Georgia together with my favorite band in the world Toto, and with Jeff Porcaro on the magical drums. The gig was an after party gig at Cafe Opera down town in Stockholm.

It was Raymond once again that got me on stage, pushing Dave to do “just one song with my great singer” “So you’re a singer” Dave said, what kind of songs do you do?” I’ll do any kind of Toto I said, he looked at me and said:” there will be no Toto songs here tonight, only our own favorites.

“Ok then, what about Georgia on my mind?” I said. Dave looked kind of shocked and started to smile. He told me later that if I had picked another song we wouldn’t have played together, but his father Marty Paich worked on the original tracks with Ray Charles on that song. A great memory! Dave told me to come to L.A anytime and have fun, and I have been there a lot of times with him and JJ since that day.

I started working in different studios in Stockholm, and my dear friend “Gurra” Gustafsson asked me: “Why don’t you pick up a guitar and start to do live gigs, there’s a lot of places you can play”. It sounds easy, and it was. It has been my living since then.

As a songwriter I didn’t get started until I got a song in the Norwegian final of “Eurovision song contest” in 1994. Jahn Teigen, who is a big star in Norway, sang the song although I have to admit that I wanted to sing it myself. But NRK (the Norwegian TV Company) wouldn’t allow me to do it. However Jahn did a great job and my passion for that festival was born. I qualified with the following songs as a songwriter in Norway.

1994 Gi alt vi har (Performed by Jahn Teigen)
1995 Uten Lyst uten tro (Performed by me)
1996 Uten De (Performed by me) and Jennina (Performed by Steven Ackels)
1997 Tenker på dig written by Are Selheim was performed by me.

In 1996 I met Niklas Rosström and we worked for the first time together. He was in charge of Popkalaset in Finland, a great concert tour. I did the Vasa gig, and later that year I did a children’s charity concert at Finnish MTV3 together with big Swedish stars like, Tomas Ledin, Frida (from Abba), Mikael Whie, Ainbusk Singers, Peter Jöback, Triple & Touch and a young and great Jari Sillanpä.

In the period of 1996-2001 I did a lot of recordings as a singer in Stockholm. The studio projects names are Prisoner, Radioactive and Rainmaker. I also wrote songs on some of these albums.

Tommy Denander is a brilliant guitar player and a cool songwriter of this type of music. And his co-pilot Dr. Love (Ricki B Delin) was quite a trip too. I have great memories of that time and now I have “been there and done that”, and it is time to move on. The albums are out there and some of them are cool. I do know that a lot of my fans around the world like them, so God bless you :)

During that time I finally met my dear friend Sayit. He is a great guitar player and I am proud to say that I have worked and am still working with him. I have had the pleasure to sing on his three first albums, “Sayit”, “Again” and “Louder”, check them out!

Working with Sayit also gave me the chance to start working with Christian Antblad, a great keyboard player and songwriter. He is one of the sweetest and nicest persons in this industry. I still hope and believe we will do some magic together in the future.

During the beginning of 2000 I put my own band together in Finland with Vesa Kääpä from Leningrad Cowboys on guitar, Harri Seppälä Drums, Ako Sinivalo on bas and Tuomo Borman on guitar. What a great Rock’n Roll band! We did a few gigs around in Finland but unfortunately it all died out mostly because I had to go on tour in other countries. This was a shame because we were great friends and had a lot of fun. I’ve had a blast in Finland, there is a lot of very good players in this beautiful country.

At the end of 2001 Maki Kolehmainen asked me to sing his beautiful ballad “I don’t wanna throw it all away” in the Finnish Eurovision song contest. So in the beginning of 2002 I was back in the Eurovison game :) And I can’t help it, I just love it! We came in third place with the song that he wrote together with Tracy Lip.

In 1998 I started working with an amazing songwriter, Douglas Pashley, who wrote “where do we go from here” together with David Foster. It was the soundtrack at Eraser, the big movie with Arnold Schwarznegger and Vanessa Williams. She sang the beautiful song and it became Billboard “Song of the year” in 1998.

Douglas and I still plan to work together, he is without a doubt one of my favorite songwriters and I admire him a lot. We have so far done some songs for the famous Finnish classical singer Tomi Metsäketo on his first two albums.

In 2002 and 2003 I met the guys who still are in my band. I have given my heart to these guys, Dennis and Rolli. We started as a trio up in Jakobstad in Finland during the summer of 2002. And it has been a lot of fun since then. It doesn’t matter what the occasion is, together we can put together any kind of cool night for you with my band. We play rock’ n roll, reggae, dance music etc., everything we’re asked to.

During all these years I have done gigs in a lot of countries, you may have seen me in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, England, Romania, USA, Monaco, the list is long and it goes on and on :)

In 2003 I started working with my dear friend Niklas Rosström again. He got me started for real here in Finland, and I was once again in the Finnish Eurovision song contest. Niklas helped me out with everything! This time we came 5th with “I don’t need to say”, a song I wrote together with Jimmy Westerlund and Fredrik Furu.

Niklas arranged so I got my first gig with Robert Wells in February 2004. The year started with a few TV shows (“Schlager på lager”) on Finnish TV. Niklas also got me on the big Diggiloo tour when they came to Finland July 2004. It was great fun to sing together with Siw Malmkvist, Ann-Louise Hanson, Lotta Engberg, Sven-Erik “Sven Ingvars” Magnusson, Lill-Babs, Fame Factory Jessica and Magnus, Andres Esteche, Lasse Holm, Andy and my old friend Elisabeth Andreassen. That was in a way a big change for me as an artist.

I am the proud winner of the Finnish Eurovision 2005 with the great ballad “Why”. We did not qualify to the final in Kiev, but a dream came true later that year when I sang in The Royal Albert Hall in London.
I am the singer of the official song “Victory” in 2005 IAAF World Championship in Helsinki. That song gave me the unforgettable journey to the casino in Monaco and performing the song live in front of all the leaders and stars of IAAF track and field including Prince Albert of Monaco. And I sang it in the opening and closing ceremony of the World Championship.

I got my own show “The Geir Rönning Show” at the international Casino in Helsinki in 2006 and 2007. In 2006 we also had great fun doing “Abba in Symphony” in Sandefjord, Norway Tommy Körberg, Trine Rein, Maarja and I. During the last few years I have had the great pleasure of being on tour in many countries with Maestro Robert Wells and his fantastic “Rhapsody in Rock”.

But hey.. I am still hungry!! I hope to see you out there.

Best Regards
Geir

Words and picture from the official website.

Discography