Jari Mäenpää (born 23 December 1977) is a Finnish singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. He is the founder of heavy metal Wintersun for which he records all instruments except the drums. Before forming Wintersun, Mäenpää was also known for his role in the folk metal band Ensiferum, which he joined in 1996 after leaving his prior band named Immemorial.[1] Wintersun was initially planned as a parallel project alongside Ensiferum, but in January, 2004 he was forced to leave Ensiferum due to clashes between their touring schedule and the studio recording time he had booked for Wintersun.
In 1997, Mäenpää had to put his musical career on hold to take part in Finland's compulsory military service. In an interview, Mäenpää admitted he disliked the time he spent in the military and suspects it's where he acquired tuberculosis.[2]
Jari was also a member of the band Arthemesia, and participated in Kimmo Miettinen's side project Lost Alone.
I have a little bit of a mournful, melancholic, majestic or kind of "spacy" way of writing when it comes to melodies. Although everything is not melancholic, but rather "heroic" like you said, but I don't know if it's the right word to describe it. It's difficult to find adjectives to describe the feeling of my own music - it's just me. When I wrote songs to Ensiferum (few songs like "Lai Lai Hei and "Token of Time"), I first needed to get into that "folk mood", before the music came out of me. Wintersun's music just comes out naturally. I don't mean to write certain things. It just happens, I guess.
Jari's style of guitar playing utilizes tremolo-picked melodies and phrases and the heavy use of extremely fast sweep-picking solos and breaks as heard on most of the songs. The speed of Wintersun's music is due in part to the use of blast beats and quick, spacey keyboard lines. This gives the guitar a charging, power metal feel for the most part.[3]
Jari Mäenpää no longer performs guitar live, on Facebook he released the following statement, "After thinking about it for a long time I have made the decision to drop the live guitar, which means that I will solely become 100% live vocalist."[4]