Timo Tolkki's Avalon was born in the Autumn of 2012. The debut album The Land Of New Hope was released in May 2013 by Frontiers Records and had high chart entries in 7 countries.

The album features performances by numerous internationally acclaimed singers and musicians such as Michael Kiske, Elize Ryd, Russell Allen, Sharon Den Adel, Tony Kakko, Alex Holzwarth, Jens Johansson, Derek Sherenian and of course Timo Tolkki himself.

Although Avalon has been described by the media as a "Metal Opera", it really is a vehicle for Timo Tolkki to express his music in various formats using high quality musicians. Avalon is formatized in the sense that for example in a live situation, anyone of the vocalists could sing in the live show. It doesn't have a permanent line up except Tolkki.

Metal Operas have become very popular and Avalon is certainly not the first to introduce this. Since the 70′s there has been numerous Rock Operas until Savatage composed Streets-A Rock Opera in the 90′s. There were other projects such as Aina, Ayreon, Consortium Project and in between 1990-2000 David DeFeis of American band Virgin Steele composed and released 3 Metal Operas based on Greek Mythology. Based on this concept of having many singers and musicians and calling it a "Metal Opera" was Avantasia, a project of German based musician Tobias Sammet.

Avalon sees itself as a continuation to the evolution of all these, hence the title "The New Metal Opera" but it is really based on Timo Tolkki's songwriting skills as one of the forefathers of Melodic Power Metal with his band Stratovarius with whom he perfected the style by composing many Power Metal anthems between 1995-2003, playing over 2000 shows all over the world, winning a Finnish Grammy and selling more than 2 million copies between those years. With a touch of more Symphonic and grandiose sound including a lot of dynamics from ballads to fast paced songs, that is the style of Timo Tolkki's Avalon.

The name comes from the film "The Mists Of Avalon", which tells the story of King Arthur. The film describes Avalon as a place likened to "heaven" that normal mortals cannot see and it is divided by mist. It is one of Timo Tolkki's favourite films.

The future of Avalon looks promising and Tolkki is looking forward to all the musical stories he is able to tell with it and its possibilities and also live touring has been considered due to high demand from the fans and promoters.

A new album will be released in 2014.

Source: ReverbNation