Background

Tarja Turunen was born in the small village of Puhos, near Kitee, Finland. She has an older brother, Timo, and a younger brother, Toni. Her mother Ritva Sisko Marjatta (Hakkarainen) worked in the town administration, and her father Teuvo Turunen is a carpenter.

Education

At comprehensive school, Turunen performed as a singer for several projects. Her first piano teacher Kirsti Nortia-Holopainen, "Tarja was in a school that had some very musical people. Even then she got to perform a lot. I think she sang in every school function there was." Her music teacher, Plamen Dimov, later explained that, "If you gave Tarja just one note, she immediately got it. With the others, you'd have to practice three, four, five times". At school she had a tough time, since some girls bullied her because they envied her voice. To solve that problem, Dimov organized projects outside school. At fifteen, Turunen had her first major appearance as a soloist at a church concert in front of a thousand listeners. In 1993 she attended the Senior Secondary School of Art and Music in Savonlinna.

For several years Turunen performed various songs including soul music by Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin. Later she listened to songs from the classical crossover singer Sarah Brightman, especially the song "The Phantom of the Opera", and decided to focus on that genre of music. At eighteen, she moved to Kuopio to study at the Sibelius Academy.

Turunen entered in 2000 the German music university Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe to gain a professional qualification as a soloist with further specialization in art song.

Career

In December 1996, former classmate Tuomas Holopainen invited Turunen to join his new acoustic mood music project, and she immediately agreed. At the recording session for the first demo Holopainen discovered that due to her classical singing lessons, Turunen's voice had become much more powerful than he recalled from their school days. At the following band practices, Emppu Vuorinen used an electric guitar instead of an acoustic guitar because he felt that it gave a better accompaniment to her voice. Holopainen later explained that the band members had gradually realised that Turunen's voice had become too dramatic for acoustic mood music and eventually came to the conclusion that the music had to be massive too. Hence Holopainen decided to form Nightwish as a metal band.

Nightwish recorded a second demo with "more bombastic, dramatic" songs in September 1997. Holopainen used this material to convince the Finnish label Spinefarm Records to publish the band's debut album, Angels Fall First. The success of the first album came as a surprise to the label. As the album hit the top 40 of the Finnish charts, Nightwish started their tour The First Tour of the Angels.

In 1998, Nightwish published their second album, Oceanborn. This album lacked the earlier elements of folk and ambient music, and instead focused on fast, melodic keyboard and guitar lines and Turunen's dramatic voice. In addition to the Oceanborn Europe Tour (1999), Turunen sang solo in Waltari's rock-themed ballet Evankeliumi (also known as Evangelicum) in several sold-out performances at the Finnish National Opera.

Turunen enrolled in 2000 at the German music university Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe to gain a professional qualification as a soloist with further specialization in art song. In addition to the good reputation of the university, Turunen chose to go to Karlsruhe because some people at the Finnish university did not take her seriously as a classical singer due to her commitment in a metal band. While there, she recorded vocals for Nightwish's 2002 album Century Child and for Beto Vázquez Infinity. As with the other albums, Holopainen wrote the pieces and sent Turunen the lyrics and a demo recording of the prerecorded instrumental tracks by mail. Using the demo, Turunen designed her vocal lines and the choral passages.

In 2002, Turunen toured South America, performing in the classical Lied concert Noche Escandinava (Scandinavian Night) to sold-out houses. Following this and an exhausting world tour in support of Century Child (the World Tour of the Century), Nightwish took a hiatus and Turunen returned to Karlsruhe to finish her studies. After the hiatus Nightwish recorded the album Once; it was released in May 2004. The album has sold platinum in Finland and Germany and was the best selling album in all of Europe in July 2004.

The first change in the line up of Nightwish was in September 2001, when bassist Sami Vänskä was fired because Holopainen was no longer able to continue working with him. At a band meeting after the concert in Oberhausen in December 2004 Turunen informed the band members that she wanted to leave the band, but agreed to record one more album and to participate in the subsequent tour, planned for 2006/2007.

The split and, due to the open letter's allegations, Turunen's character became the subject of close media coverage.Turunen responded through an open letter on her website and through some interviews in which she explained her view. She was upset that after nine years of working together, Holopainen announced the separation via an open letter. Because of the continuing media interest, Marcelo Cabuli posted a message addressing the situation on the website in February 2006. He asked that anyone who had questions should email him. In June 2006, Cabuli posted a lengthy reply to many of the questions he had received. He answered questions related to the greed accusation by explaining that the band had agreed on the distribution of earnings in a contract at the formation of Nightwish.

At the end of 2005, Turunen performed several classical concerts in Finland, Germany, Spain, and Romania. Since she expected to participate in another Nightwish album, several concerts and the release of her Christmas album Henkäys ikuisuudesta (officially translated as Breath from Heaven) were the only activities scheduled for 2006. Turunen again played at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in July 2006, this time as the main act; she sang alongside Finnish tenor Raimo Sirkiä, supported by the Kuopio Symphonic Orchestra.

She was nominated for an Echo as best newcomer and an Emma for best Finnish artist. On 25 November 2007, Turunen embarked on the Storm World Tour to promote My Winter Storm. She performed 95 concerts throughout Europe, North and South America and ended the tour in October 2009 at the O2 Academy Islington in London. In December 2008, the EP The Seer was released in the UK and the new extended edition of My Winter Storm released in January 2009.

Turunen recorded her third album, What Lies Beneath, in 2009 and 2010; it was released in September 2010. The album combined metal with classical "operatic" elements in an out of the box approach. She started the What Lies Beneath World Tour performing in several festivals, including the Wacken Open Air and the Graspop Metal Meeting, with special concerts at Miskolc Opera Festival and at the Masters of Rock, when she performed accompanied by a full orchestra. The tour is scheduled to last until April 2012. Also in 2010 she supported Alice Cooper on the German leg of his Theatre of Death Tour. On 17 July 2011, she sang again at the Savonlinna Opera Festival along with José Cura and accompanied by the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra.

In May 2014, it was released the DVD Beauty and the Beat, providing live footage from 3 concerts as part of the Beauty and the Beat World Tour. The DVD shows Tarja performing live with a symphonic orchestra, choir and Mike Terrana on drums. Songs include Antonín Dvořák's "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", and also a live version of the rarely performed song "Swanheart" from the 1998 Nightwish album Oceanborn. On the same year, in July, Left in the Dark was released as an EP containing alternative versions from Tarja's album Colours in the Dark, as well as a studio version of "Into the Sun".

On 17 October 2015, Tarja performed two new songs from her forthcoming album, "No Bitter End" and "Goldfinger", which is a cover of the title song of the James Bond film with the same name.

Tarja announced she is to release a new album in the summer of 2016. She explains that "she has been working hard once again with Tim Palmer to create the heaviest sound so far of her career for her fourth rock album". She also explained that the album will follow in the same footsteps as her other albums but with a new soul and growth. A teaser with a snippet of two songs was then released on her official YouTube channel. On 17 February 2016, Tarja also revealed the first letter of the album name to be T.

Achievements

• Turunen was seen as a key to Nightwish's success. She is respected by other musicians of the metal genre and is an influence on their work; for instance, Simone Simons of Epica names her as her inspiration to study classical music and apply that vocal style to a metal band. During her solo career, Turunen has sold over 100,000 certified records in Finland, which places her among the top 50 of best-selling female soloists.

Works

More photos

• music

  • Angels Fall First 1997
  • Oceanborn 1998
  • Wishmaster 2000
  • Century Child 2002
  • Once 2004
  • Winter Storm 2007
  • What Lies Beneath 2001
  • Colours In The Dark 2013
  • Tarja Turunen 2016
  • From Spirits and Ghosts 2017

Religion

She said: “I wouldn’t call myself a religious person, I’m more of a spiritual person. I was baptised as Lutheran [a branch of Protestant Christianity that’s popular in many of the Scandinavian countries], not that I really follow the church. When I was little, my mother taught me a prayer that I said before I went to sleep and we used to go to the church before Christmas, but that was about it. I do believe in God but it’s a very personal thing for me. These days, I probably spend more time performing in churches than I do attending services in them. The acoustics make them nice places to perform in and you get a different kind of atmosphere when you hold a show there. They’re designed for musical performance and they’re beautiful places."

Views

As a classical singer, Turunen sings with classical vocal technique. She explained that in the early days of Nightwish, it was difficult to combine classical technique with the metal sound in a way that gave her liberty of action without damaging her vocal cords. Classical techniques helped her to play with her voice, so she decided not to pursue extra training in rock/pop singing.

Quotations: "The biggest challenge is to become a mother – that I would love. That’s kind of a huge responsibility and huge dream.”

“Rock gives me the freedom and classical music keeps me critical. When I hit the rock stage, I don’t need to be perfect. I use the knowledge I have as a classical singer, but I forget about the technical side of it. I just rock out and have fun with my band. But when I play in front of a classical audience with an orchestra, I have to be perfect. I get nervous every single time.”

Personality

She has never smoked and she has never been into drinking but she enjoys a couple of glasses of red wine.

Physical Characteristics: Tarja's natural hair color is light brown. Tarja's eye color is green. Tarja is 5'5'' tall.

Turunen's voice type is soprano. Over the course of her career, Turunen has developed a vocal range of three octaves. Her range is apparent on her album My Winter Storm, where the lowest note sung is F3 in the song "The Seer", while in another song, she aimed for D6: "I sang a repertoire of a mezzo-soprano for many years and because of that, still today, I have rarely quite low register for a lyrical soprano. Nowadays, I see myself as a light lyrical soprano."

Quotes from others about the person

•  Frank Rauscher: "Tarja's classically trained voice flies bravely over orchestral sounds and brute guitars. Like a phoenix from the ashes [...] she lifts up again and again for widely arching melodies, sometimes spurred on by multi-voiced female choirs."

Interests

• Tarja speaks 5 languages.

• Sport & Clubs

  football, swimming, running

• Athletes

  San Lorenzo

• Music & Bands

  Muse, Tori Amos, Craig Armstrong

Connections

Turunen married Argentine businessman Marcelo Cabuli on December 31st, 2002 - their wedding was celebrated on July 2003; they lived in Buenos Aires with their daughter Naomi Eerika Alexia Cabuli Turunen (born 2012).

Father:

Teuvo Turunen

Mother:

Ritva Sisko Marjatta

Brother:

Timo Turunen

husband:

Marcelo Cabuli

colleague:

Tuomas Holopainen

Tuomas Lauri Johannes Holopainen (born 25 December 1976) is a Finnish songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer, best known as the founder, leader, keyboardist and songwriter of symphonic metal band Nightwish. He has also studied jazz and classical styles, but prefers to be influenced by harmonic film music.

colleague:

Emppu Vuorinen

Erno Matti Juhani "Emppu" Vuorinen is a Finnish guitarist, most famous for being a founding member and occasional songwriter of the symphonic metal band Nightwish.

colleague:

Jukka Nevalainen

Jukka Antero "Julius" Nevalainen is the drummer in the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish and the Finnish progressive metal band Sethian.

colleague:

Marco Hietala