@tarjaofficial Tarja what happened to your concert yesterday? Are you ok??.@Diana_Jordanova A stupid drunk threw an empty plastic glass and hit me. I am fine, thanks for asking. Just a black eye. Show must go on
Tarja Turunen moves to Spain with her family: â€My heart will break when I go on tour alone†Tarja Turunen answers the phone in Marbella, Spain, where the busy singer is enjoying the sounds on nature and lawnmowers between festival shows. On Wednesday her daughter Naomi celebrates her fourth birthday.- Naomi’s birthday wish was to go to a water park. She loves to be in the water and learned to swim when she was two and half years old, the proud mother reveals.In the near future Turunen, husband Marcelo Cabuli and daughter Naomi will be able to enjoy the sun in Spain more often, because the family is moving to Spain by the beginning of next year at the latest, after ten years in Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Moving from continent to another is a big thing. There’s so many things to take care of, it’s not a matter of a couple of days. We are coming to Spain, we love this culture and also want to be closer to Finland. Working from Spain will be easier in many ways.Naomi will start preschool in Spain so the family won’t tour, at least fulltime, with Turunen. Marcelo will stay home with Naomi.- It will break my heart to go one on tour alone. Until now Marcelo has been on every single tour for the past 13 years and for four years we have travelled with a child. Our life has been blessed until now, since her mother or her father has been home when Naomi woke or went to bed.The change waits her in the near future, but Turunen rejoices that for example Skype helps to keep in touch with family.- It has been our salvation, since her grandparents haven’t had the chance to see Naomi grow up. The distances have gotten shorter and even though Skype can’t obviously substitute closeness, it helps a lot. When we started to date with Marcelo, e-mail was a new thing. It was quite different back then!â€I found my artistic selfâ€The former front woman of Nightwish, who started her solo career over ten years ago, has answered many phone calls from European reporters between doing gigs. Especially many calls have come from Germany. The reason for the interviews is The Shadow Self, which will be released in early August, the first single Innocence was just released.The album was almost a three-year-long process. There was so much material that in the beginning of summer The Brightest Void-album was also released, a bonus album to The Shadow Self.- I worked on the album for a long time and I wrote songs for the past two years. I’m in the right place in this moment and I feel like this is my strongest album so far. I have found my artistic self and identity and it feels really good and right. I had so much inspiration that we released two albums during the summer.Despite her long career Turunen is still nervous about the reception her album will receive.- There’s always a certain tingling feeling, even though I’ve worked for so long. Now I feel I don’t have to explain myself and that I have a life as an artist. I’m still nervous how my fans react to the album.Return to the Voice?Turunen has toured the whole summer on festivals and The Brightest Summer –tour continues in August. In October The Shadow Shows-tour will start in Europe. Next year Turunen will be seen at least in South-America and Russia. Her tours will last until the end of 2017.- That’s pretty wild! Many people wonder, that aren’t you stressed. But as an artist it’s never self-evident that the phone won’t stop ringing. These days the sales figures for albums are worse than say ten years ago and there’s more of a pressure to go on tour. But I did pick up a gold record from the Czech Republic a week ago, so I can’t say things are bad.I Finland Turunen will be seen next in mid-August when she will perform with Kymi Sinfonietta in Kouvola and Kotka. There’s also a tour at the end of the year to celebrate her Christmas album that came out ten years ago.Turunen won’t be seen on TV however, since she left the duties of a star coach on The Voice of Finland.- I left TVOF with a tear in my eye. I loved making that show! We couldn’t make our schedules work with the production, since my tour was booked already ages ago. I believe and hope I will be seen in the format again, if not in Finland than in some other country.
Tarja Turunen, who found a new home country: The last couple of years have been dark times for FinlandA new home country, a new life situation and two new albums. Tarja Turunen’s life isn’t calming down even though she has a decade of solo career behind her.A time for great changes. You could describe Tarja Turunen’s summer in those words.In May she packed her things and moved with her family from Argentina to Spain. In the autumn her daughter will start pre-school. In the beginning of June Tarja released an album and, as if that wasn’t enough, there’s another album coming out in August.“The same madness my life usually isâ€, she says and laughs in the penthouse of a hotel in Camden.There’s a hectic schedule now too. Turunen and her band have a show in London and a day between shows is packed with interviews with the global media starting from 9 am.Turns and rush haven’t been missing in Turunen’s life.It’s been a decade since she was pushed onto a solo career from Nightwish. From this band Turunen is primarily remembered and for good reason: she was involved in creating a whole new genre of music, symphonic metal, in which her classical singing met a metal band.After that Tarja was faced with a new beginning to which she seems to answer with being hard-working.In ten years she has recorded as many albums: heavier rock, classical, Christmas songs and concert recordings. After the most internationally successful Finnish band concert venues changed from arenas to clubs but there are still places to tour, especially in continental Europe and South-America.â€I’m absolutely happy and proud of the current situationâ€, she says. “I don’t feel like I have anything to prove to anyone anymore. I have my own life and my own wings. I’m of course proud and grateful for my time in Nightwish too, but I’m now in a totally different place than in those days.â€â€œMy fans call me workaholic. There are so many things that are solely my responsibilitiesâ€, she comments her current life as a solo artist. “There’s always some project in the works and I also have a little girl running around.â€â€Luckily I have people around me, the band members, tour crew and of course my husband I can trust and who keep this crazy puzzle together. It gives me the freedom to be an artist.â€The just released The Brightest Void is a foretaste of the “actual album†The Shadow Self, which will be released in August.The exceptional decision was made because Turunen had written so many songs with her band members and outside songwriters that they wouldn’t fit on one album.â€The songs are so personal and there’s so much emotion in them that I didn’t want to leave them out of the albumâ€, she explains the solution. “At the same time it gave me the opportunity to release different kind of songs that have been waiting for the right place, more movie score like songs. I get to shock the listener a bit.â€The combining theme between the albums according to Turunen is opposites, the journey from light to shadow, like the album names tell. The Shadow Self she picked up from an interview of singer Annie Lenox.“The last few years I’ve been wondering what on earth is the darkness or depth that makes me write. When I sit in front of piano something clear, misty and mystical comes out. What makes me do that?â€â€Then I read an interview with Annie Lenox, where she told that “the shadow self†is our creative power. The shadow in us that makes us write, make art and be striking. A way to give everything we feel, good or bad, to the art. That was the answer to my question.â€Releasing the albums and the hullabaloo starting from it means great changes in the Turunen family. They have settled into a new country.The past years Turunen has lived mainly in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in which she has become almost as well-known as in Finland.â€It’s really an incredible thing, but I never felt like a foreigner in Buenos Aires or that people see me as a foreigner. Especially when the language started to open up to me, the culture opened in a whole new way.â€â€Buenos Aires and its culture gave me room to breathe. Perhaps life in Argentina has given me the freedom to be more of a wild girl!†she laughs.In May the family moved to Marbella, Spain. The new hometown was chosen partly for the common language Spain, partly for the climate and connections.â€I miss light, not so much the warmth. I don’t enjoy sunbathing, but light affects massively how I feelâ€, she says.“We wanted to go to Europe because the distances are shorter here. My girl is going to preschool in the fall even though she isn’t even four yet. That feels terrible! It’s a huge change in our life because starting from September her father will stay home with her. In Argentina this would have been much harder. The family would have hardly ever seen me. â€Returning to Finland feels “foreign at this momentâ€, although both her daughter and husband enjoy being there. “Perhaps it’s me who keeps myself from returningâ€, she says.This doesn’t mean that her home country is completely wiped from her mind. Family and work keep drawing her back and Turunen starts her morning by reading the news from Finnish online newspapers. The conversation aggravated by the financial abyss and immigration looks peculiar to an outsider.â€It’s quite something, what’s happening in Finland. The last couple of years have been dark timesâ€, she sighs. “It’s also that surely in a greater scale and especially in Argentina. It’s hyper madness there. The reign changed just a little while ago and the country is at rock bottom. There are people fighting for everyday life or else you are on the street – really. The political situation in Argentina is partly the reason for our move.â€â€People in Finland aren’t used to things not going well. They are used to good thingsâ€, she compares the situation in the two countries. “We’ve had security in our lives and we haven’t fallen to the bottom, but these days that has become normal to many people.â€
