Music

English:
Born in Kitee, Finland, Turunen began to study music at the age of six, and moved to the city of Kuopio at the age of eighteen to study at the Sibelius Academy. She became a founding member of Nightwish in 1996 when her classmate Tuomas Holopainen invited her to join his new musical project. That year Turunen also performed with the Savonlinna Opera Festival. However, she did not become internationally famous until the release of Nightwish's successful follow-up album, Oceanborn, in 1998.

Turunen sang solo in Waltari's rock-themed 1999 ballet Evankeliumi (also known as Evangelicum) in several sold-out performances at the Finnish National Opera. She continued to tour and record with Nightwish through 2000 and 2001, after which she enrolled in the Music University in Karlsruhe, Germany. While there, she recorded vocals for Nightwish's 2002 album Century Child and for Beto Vázquez Infinity.

In 2002, Turunen toured South America, performing in the classical Lied concert Noche Escandinava (Scandinavian Night), again to sold-out houses. Following this and an exhausting world tour in support of Century Child, Nightwish took a hiatus and Turunen returned to Karlsruhe.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen and her husband invited Turunen to the President's Palace in Helsinki in December 2003 for the Finnish Independence Day Party, Finland's biggest social event, where the viewers of Finnish television station Yle named her the most impressively dressed lady, among honors given by several newspapers and magazines.

After the hiatus, Turunen rejoined Nightwish for the album Once and supporting world tour throughout 2004-2005, and embarked on a second Noche Escandinava tour in the spring of 2004. For Christmas 2004, she released the single Yhden Enkelin Unelma (One Angel's Dream), which sold gold in her native country, Finland. For the spring of 2005, she prepared a collaboration with Germany's Martin Kesici, the duet 'Leaving You for Me', also accompanied by a video. On October 21, 2005, Turunen was asked to leave Nightwish in an open letter by the other members of Nightwish, over a dispute that involved "a changed attitude" and increased financial interest.[2] She responded through another open letter, which was posted on her website in both Finnish and English (although the letter can no longer be found on her website, it is available on a fan page). [3] In February 2006, Tarja's husband Marcelo posted a message to her website addressing the situation, and asked for anyone who had questions pertaining to the issues between Tarja and the rest of the band to email him.[4] Marcelo then posted a lengthy reply to many of the questions he had received in June 2006.[5]

[edit] Solo career
Turunen in solo concert, 2006.
Turunen in solo concert, 2006.

In December 2005, she performed several Christmas concerts in Finland, Germany, Spain and Romania. 2006 was not a break year for Turunen, who has recorded a Christmas album and vocals for her brother, Timo Turunen's debut album. She also made an appearance at the Savonlinna Opera Festival.

On September 16th Tarja attended a Meet and Greet session / Listening Party with some fans in London to help launch the Spinefarm UK label [6]. At the event the fans were given the opportunity to be the first in the world to listen to 8 of the songs from her upcoming album My Winter Storm as well as ask Tarja questions. Overall the reaction was good. Tarja confirmed at the event that there would be some solo dates at the end of the year, including London.

The following day, September 17th, Tarja's solo dates were announced across Europe. The currently confirmed cities are Berlin, London, Moscow, Budapest, Athens, Cologne, Paris, Amsterdam and Zurich. [7]

In October 2007 a Street Team endorsed by Universal Music and Spinefarm UK was launched for Tarja through UK based company Worst Decision. The aim of the team is to help promote Tarja's upcoming single, album and tour with the help of dedicated fans, the most dedicated of which will be eligible to receive free stuff for their work [8]. While currently aimed mainly at the UK market it is hoped that many members from all over the world will join to help spread the word about Tarja throughout the UK, Europe and around the world.

Tarja's first solo album, 'My Winter Storm', was released in November 2007 and achieved gold status in Finland on the day of release. My Winter Storm took the number 1 spot in the Finnish charts. 'My Winter Storm' has now gone platinum in Finland and gold in Russia, Her first ever in Russia. Tarja also sings on track "In The Picture", composed by Rage guitarist Victor Smolski, on Nuclear Blast Allstars' album Into The Light, 2007[3].

In late 2007 Tarja was nominated for 2 awards, an "ECHO" as best newcomer and an "emma" for best finnish artist

Albums:

# Henkäys Ikuisuudesta (2006)
# My Winter Storm (2007)

Single:

1. "Yhden Enkelin Unelma" (2004)
2. "Leaving You For Me" feat. Martin Kesici (2005)
3. "You Would Have Loved This" (2006)
4. "I Walk Alone" (2007)
5. "Die Alive" (2008)

Tarja Turunen- Die Alive


Tarja's Letter to the Public
Journal Entry: Fri Jan 6, 2006, 8:02 AM
Here we transcribe the letter Tarja made public, 2 days ago:

Since last Sunday morning, I have been asked to express my position by magazines, newspapers, radio and TV stations, fan clubs and fans from Finland and from all over the world. So many in total that it is physically impossible for me to find the time to reply to them all individually. Hence I decided to put down a couple of words in this text to let my fans, family and friends and the public know how I feel after the recent events.

This is a moment of grief and pain and I find it very hard to speak.

At the moment I am in Argentina. I hope you can understand that after this shocking life change comparable to a divorce, I didn't want to stay alone at home in Finland. My husband had booked his tickets to Argentina many months ago and I decided to travel with him at the last minute.

But the fact that I am in Argentina and the long distance should of course not be an excuse not to comment on the situation.

Last Friday 21st of October was a day the whole band had been waiting for a long time.

Practice started early in the morning. I was very sick and nervous because of the fact that I was not even able to sing during the rehearsals.

Also nervous because the concert programme was going to be longer than usual for a Nightwish concert. Furthermore we were going to have a special guest to perform with us, more wardrobe changes for myself than usual and for the first time big screens and bigger production on stage.

Not to forget that the concert was going to be recorded and filmed.

The five of us had finally made it to play Hartwall Arena.

Even though every one of us knew in advance that the concert was sold out, finally on stage, we saw that screaming, applauding and standing people took every seat. The feeling was unbelievable.

I will never forget how amazing it was to experience the Finnish audience's gorgeous reception.

When the concert was over, I cried of happiness on stage. Happy tears because I was able to do my best as always even though I was sick. Happy tears because our long tour got the greatest possible ending and happy tears because of the best recognition an artist can get: applause and smiling faces.

At that moment I didn't know that I was going to cry again soon.

After the concert, the guys of the band invited me backstage to join them and asked me to hug altogether. This felt strange as it was the same kind of hug we traditionally came together for before every concert. That tradition remained between us, even though the tension and increasing pressure already existed since a long period of time.

The immediate feeling in me was to thank them, which I did loudly but without any reply.

After this, they gave me a letter and asked me to read it the following day. The same letter that is now public.

I read it and was shocked.

I didn't know what to say and still at the moment that I am writing these lines, I don't.

I sense great anger in that letter and I continue to have very confused feelings about it, but I don't want to reply to this anger with an even greater anger. Private matters should never be taken to the public.

I know this moment we are going through is very sad for everybody, including the guys.

While there would have been so many different possibilities and ways to express what they wanted to tell me with the letter, I remain unable to understand the way they chose to handle this. I am sorry that the guys got me so wrong. I don't recognize myself at all from the way they described me.

They mentioned mean things about me, but the fact that they involved Marcelo, my husband, crossed the line. He is the man I love, my friend and has been my biggest support over the last years.

We have been band mates for 9 years, experienced good times and not so good ones. I thought I knew them, but I was wrong.

Still everything that has happened is not enough to make them evil in my eyes.

Now comes a time to calm down and reflect upon all of this.

I need to put my feelings together again and I promise to come back to public soon.
I will announce a press conference where I will be talking about my future plans. This doesn't mean that you should expect this conference to be an instrument to attack anybody. It won't.

The wonderful music we created together won't be touched by recent events.

Thanks a lot to all the people who are supporting me during these sad times. My family, friends, colleagues, and the great number of fans. I love you and I really feel I have not failed you.

Tarja