Tarja Turunen

The brightest star of the Finnish rock scene, the soprano singer Tarja Turunen has in a short time become one of the most well-known Finnish faces in the world of music.
Turunen, who was born in the city of Kitee, Finland, started her musical studies at the age of six, and moved to study classical singing at the age 18 at the Sibelius Academy of Kuopio city.
At the same time Tarja..'s classmate Tuomas Holopainen was starting his acoustical project, and invited Turunen to join the band. Tarja said yes to the invitation, and thus Nightwish was born.
Tarja has been several times recognised among the best singers and specially in her home country, Soundi Magazine’s reader’s poll elected Tarja in 2002 as best Finnish singer and as the most wonderful person.
Despite the band growing success Tarja made time available for her studies and other projects. In the end of 1999 Turunen took part as a soloist singer in a modern ballet production of the Finnish National Opera House called "The Evankeliumi".
The show was written and directed by the famous Finnish choreographer Jorma Uotinen together with Kärtsy Hatakka of the Finnish band Waltari. All performances of “The Evankeliumi” were completely sold out.
In the beginning of 2000 Nightwish took part in the Finnish qualification of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Sleepwalker. Nightwish was second despite an overwhelming win in the public televoting.
There was more demand for gigs than the band could handle, so in 2001 the first live Nightwish-recording was made on New Years Eve 2000-2001, when Nightwish played a gig at club Pakkahuone in Tampere, Finland.
The gig was filmed and recorded, and that material was then made into a DVD and VHS. The Finnish fans also got a limited edition full-length Live CD. All of these formats were released under the name "From Wishes to Eternity - Live", and every format proved to be a huge seller reaching once again, gold in Finland in CD format and gold in Germany in DVD.
After three huge tours the band had in their hands an unbelievable amount of good off-stage and on-stage material. A documentary was an obvious choice when a usage for the material was planned, but the band felt that something extra was needed to support the various touring scenes.
The answer was found when the Finnish music journalist Mape Ollila, who has been closely working with the band since the very beginning of Nightwish, asked Tuomas for an in-depth interview. Tuomas agreed, and the interviewers were then taken to Tuomas Holopainen's summer cottage with Nighwish members and crew.
With the interview combined with the touring material, the result was the 2 hours and 15 minutes long documentary, which tells the band's tale in their words, from the very beginning to the present day.
The new DVD “End of the Innocence” was released in October 2003 worldwide. At this point the year has already been very successful for Tarja, but it was definitely crowned by the invitation received from Finnish President Tarja Halonen and husband Dr. Arajärvi to assist to the President's Palace for the Finnish Independence Day Party, the most important social event of the country that takes place every year.
Tarja Turunen achieved a new status when Yle TV Station official web page named her as The Most Impressive dressed lady in the party according to the people vote. Also the most important Finnish daily Newspapers as Ilta Lehti and Ilta Sanomat awarded her as the Queen of the Night and the Second Most Impressive dressed lady respectively.
Many magazines and novedadespapers reflected this new mentioned status in their publications in the following month with a full national coverage of the issue.
To end with an astonishing year, in December 19th 2003 Tarja Turunen performed, after three years, an intimate Christmas Concert. The small Valkeala’s Church welcomed 600 people whom stood up to return a warmth applause to the artist after 60 minutes of traditional Finnish Christmas music from Sibelius, Kotilainen and Melartin as well as some arias from Bach and Mozart.
Nightwish started recording a brand new studio album and Tarja Turunen, after registering her parts, once again in the classical field, travelled to Buenos Aires, Argentina to share her voice this time offering a one month singing course to already trained musicians.
2006 will showed the beginning of her solo career with a long time planned Christmas Album. Album global sales with Nightwish exceed 1.000.000 copies. Tarja has already performed for more than 500.000 people worldwide.
Many songs and video clips from Nightwish have already been in high rotation in several countries.
The TV broadcasting of the Independence Day’s Celebration at the Presidential Castle introduced Tarja Turunen to more than 2.000.000 people in Finland according to Yle TV Station.
So far, this has only begun…