Tarja Turunen

Tarja Soile Susanna Turunen-Cabuli was born in Puhos, Finland on August 17th, 1977; she has one older brother (Timo) and one younger brother (Toni). Her talent for music was first noticed when, at 3 years old, she sang "Enkeli taivaan" (the Finnish version of "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come") in the Kitee church hall. She started taking vocal lessons, and joined the church choir. At 6 years old, she started learning to play piano. 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, some girls bullied her because they envied her musicality and vocal talent. To solve the problem, Dimov would organize projects outside school. At 15 years old, Turunen had her first major appearance as a soloist at a church concert in front of one 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 classical crossover artist Sarah Brightman, especially the song "The Phantom of the Opera", and decided to focus on that genre of music. At 18 years old, she moved to Kuopio to study at the renowned Finnish music conservatory, Sibelius Academy. In December 1996, former classmate Tuomas Holopainen invited Turunen to join his new acoustic mood project and she agreed. At the recording session for their first demo, Holopainen discovered that due to her classical singing lessons ,Turunen's voice had become much more powerful than he remembered from their school days. At following practices, Erno 'Emppu' Vuorinen used an electric guitar instead of acoustic because he felt that it better accompanied her voice. Holopainen later explained that the band members had gradually realized that Turunen's voice had become too dramatic for acoustic music, and eventually came to the conclusion that the music had to be massive too. Holopainen decided to form Nightwish as a metal band, and Erno 'Emppu' Vuorinen and Tarja Turunen became Nightwish's fellow Founding Members. The rest is history.