Tarja Turinen New CD
© Tarja Turinen
Ex-Nightwish Singer's Christmas Album Certified Gold in Finland
By: Randall LarsonDate: Monday, December 04, 2006
Former Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen's Christmas album, Henkäys Ikuisuudesta (Breath from Heaven), has been certified gold in Finland for sales in excess of 15,000 copies.
The new album, entitled Henkäys Ikuisuudesta (Breath from Heaven), is a Christmas album with Tarja’s uniquely operatic interpretations of traditional Finnish Christmas songs. The album is much softer that the hard-driving progressive metal she was associated with in Nightwish, is being released only in Finland, and in Argentina where Tarja lives and performs part of the year.
Turunen entered the Finnish single chart at position No. 5 with her latest solo release, "You Would Have Loved This." The single was written by Cori Connors who has also composed for Linda Ronstadt. The single contains a radio version of the song, “You would have loved this,” which is different from the one available in the album, as well as a very soft version of the Howard Blake’s classic “Walking in the air,” radically different from the previous Nightwish album version. While the tonality and drive of the album is much different than her work with Nightwish, the emphasis remains on her remarkable vocal abilities, which for so line defined the female-fronted metal sound.
Commented Tarja: "I found the song 'You Would Have Loved This' from America. The story in the lyrics fits perfectly in this album. It's about the loss of a dear one. With this in mind we did an even more intimate version for album than for the single. It has very touching and beautiful melody." While the album is a Christmas oriented album, of Finnish traditions, Tarja states that, “the album reflects the theme of Christmas, but I also wanted to have songs that are not limited to that time. The songs are not just telling about Christmas, but are telling about any time of the year, any moment. There are traditional Finnish Christmas songs, international Christmas songs, and also some classical pieces, so the feeling is changing from one song to another.” Tarja also noted that she made sure the album avoided any kind of “jingle bells sound.” “You won’t hear any Christmas bells on this album!”
A video interview (in Finnish, with English subtitles) with Tarja Turunen about her new album can be viewed at www.universalmusic.fi/tarjamicr
Digital downloads of the song are available from
http://download.netanttila.com/
http://musiikkilataamo.hs.fi
(also supposedly on iTunes but I haven’t found it there yet)
I found copies of both the LP and singles available on eBay, and they can be ordered via Tarja’s web site:
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