Soprano singer discusses her solo career after ten years with Nightwish
By Pablo KrauseHerald Staff
Soprano Tarja Turunen was the voice of Finnish power/symphonic metal band Nightwish for almost ten years, recording seven albums and becoming the best-known female vocalist in heavy metal, leading the way to a new generation of female-fronted bands.
Tarja and Nightwish parted ways in 2005, in a controversial break-up that included a public letter from the band with strong accusations to Tarja and her husband.
Married to an Argentine record producer and dividing her time between Buenos Aires and Finland, Tarja says the “ghost” of Nightwish is no longer a part of her life and is now dedicated to her solo career, which she claims has given her an artistic freedom she had never experienced before.
Tarja will be performing four concerts in Buenos Aires, with two shows at El Teatro Flores and two intimate performances at La Trastienda, which she is more nervous about.
“It’s the first time I’m doing this kind of concerts with my current band, and I’m very happy because it’s going to be with the people sitting down, with tables and everything… a little scary for me also, because I’m going to be a lot closer to my audience and therefore I have to think what kind of songs I can perform,” said Tarja.
“But it’s not going to be an acoustic concert. We are going to do a rock concert with some premières and other special surprises,” she added.
Although the shows will focus on her solo career, Tarja will also perform some of Nightwish’s songs. She claims she is now better able to perform those songs, as her technique in the early years of Nightwish was not yet developed.
“On the first Nightwish album I was just… crap! Seriously, I was struggling with classical singing and the technique to sing in a heavy metal band and nobody was there to help me!,” she said.
“I had a vocal coach because during the Nightwish period I was permanently studying and taking classical singing lessons. Of course those studies helped me sing this kind of music too, we are talking about the same instrument – but it’s a different way to use my voice, so that it didn’t sound too operatic for heavy metal and people could understand what I was singing. It was a very difficult task, that was my struggle.”
Tarja was dismissed from Nightwish with a public letter from the band with strong accusations about money issues and diva attitudes. Back then, Tarja released a statement saying she did not recognize herself in those words.
“I think that many of the things that were said should have never been exposed to the public, and I will not comment on those things. There’s no ‘ghost’ of Nightwish in my life anymore. It has been a major part of my career and of my life, a very, very important period that ended very, very badly,” she said.
“Today, I still love the music of Nightwish and still play some of it because I’m proud of it. It’s very sad that it ended the way it did, but life goes on. I’m so happy today to be able to do my music. Nothing will change the fact that I was the singer in Nightwish and I don’t have any problems with that: I still have many Nightwish fans supporting me, and I’m really grateful for that,” she said.
Tarja was forced to write her own songs for her solo album (My Winter Storm, 2007), a field in which she had no previous experience as keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen managed all compositions in Nightwish.
“I’m free to explore things in life and find out what inspires me, there are no limitations to do a heavy metal song or some other kind of song… I do what I feel,” said Tarja.
“It’s always about how I feel. I sit in front of my piano and start composing songs, whatever comes into my head – good or bad. My style is progressing and I’m learning which things I like more and which I like less, that’s the great thing about being an artist. Music is all about emotions,” she added.
Before the release of My Winter Storm, Tarja said she was “trying to reach an original style or sound which did not exist in the music business,” as Nightwish had introduced her to metal elements that she would use along with her soprano voice.
“I’m still working on it,” said Tarja. “For the first album, it was really difficult for me to explain what I wanted to do to the people I was working with. It was really hard for me to put it into words and tell them that maybe I wanted to do a heavy metal song, but that there would have to be elements of movie soundtracks and different sounds. I wanted to create a kind of open and clear sound, full of emotion but also having elements from metal with a heavy-sounding guitar.”
Tarja has a second studio album (What Lies Beneath) expected to be released this year, where she aims to reach the sound she is looking for.
“It’s not easy to combine symphonic elements like very beautiful orchestrations with a heavy guitar. So there will be songs with guitars – and they will blow your head – and then there will be songs with the orchestra, and that is going to blow your head too,” she said.
Link: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/PrintedEdition/View/1701
