"Star duet"  - interview by Floor Jansen

Already in the moment when the decision that Tarja would leave Nightwish was made, it was interesting to observe how the both "camps" would manage to utilize their well groovy names. Tarja spread her wings and started to gather experience of professionals from the whole world. She adroitly left metal genre behind, nevertheless she was able to satisfy her loyal audience. One album was enough for her to achieve a reputation of an executant. She gained respect and appreciation in the lobby of top artists. Therefore, for her upcoming album What Lies Beneath she could afford more than two-year long production which definitely wouldn´t have been spurned neither by her former place of work. The reality is that the metal fans must share Tarja with the listeners of pop and classical music. Tarja complied to her gift even more and revealed another hidden nooks of her musical yearnings. She´s really preparing a genuine masterpiece.
Floor Jansen from Dutch After Forever found herself in the same situation like Tarja had been in four years before. The band ended their career a year ago, so Floor had to continue on her own. However, she didn´t choose to go on alone but rather formed a new band ReVamp. In contrast of Tarja, we can expect a vigorous metal piece from her. Both Tarja and Floor are hot names on all the fields of metal and rock and a unique idea was born in the editorial staff- to let Floor convey the arranged interview with Tarja. She keenly accepted, so the next lines are an exclusive chatter between two metal ladies.

A woman with many faces

Floor: How do you feel about your new album nowadays?
Tarja: It will definitely be more rock, heavy album and it will show me from other sides the fans are used to, wide orchestral tirades won´t be missing either. The variety of the songs is a result of my decision to produce the record on my own and let my fantasy work fully. Looking back today, it´s been really exciting for me because after two long years I´m finally getting to the finale and it´s unbelievable how much time I´ve devoted to the album. Probably the most difficult task was to decide which songs would be used on the actual album, because I´d written really diverse material back then. I slowly start to be full of anticipation and I´m looking forward to present the record to people. I´m curious to see their reactions.

Floor: So you worked on the album for two years. Did you manage to find a new creative passion which eventually became your basic inspiration?
Tarja: The composing process is still something new and fresh for me. I learn new things all the time, mainly from the people I work with. Gradually I start believing myself more and more and stop doubting. I retrained my piano playing and I feel sufficiently free because of it- I´m finally able to musically express my imaginations and immediately work with the mood and atmosphere of the song. I think the circumstances the album was created under will affect the final result too. I wrote the majority of the songs on the tour so they might be influenced by the place where they were born in. Only a few realise the ambience and conditions which he/she composes in contribute on the sound of the album too. The most important thing for me is probably light. I´m from Finland, the days are not very long there thus you can´t enjoy the sunshine very often. For me the light is something like energy which "charges" me all the time and keeps me in a good mood.

Floor: I understand your point in the need of bigger self-confidence. I used to be "only" the singer too and I never really took part in the composing. With my new band ReVamp I was in the same situation like you. I had to work in other ways than only with my voice. I wasn´t sure if my method was right and if I was able to fulfil myself.
Tarja: As soon as you make bold to it, you´ll quickly find out it´s awesome. You can change anything, create more versions, try anything that comes to your mind... And suddenly you get to the situation that the volcano of ideas is bottomless and you don´t now which idea to realise first. But we shouldn´t forget we write the music above all for ourselves. That´s the only way you can feel satisfied and proud. I have the advantage that I was recording with the same band which had gone on the last tour with me so the atmosphere was very relaxed. The recordings were fun for us because we already knew each other very well and it was quite like a friendly gathering. Their trust in me helped me a lot too. I felt they supported my decisions so I had someone to lean on.

Floor: Does it mean the new album is closer to you than My Winter Storm?
Tarja: Yes, definitely. I´m standing up for myself. All the songs were written by me this time, everything the fans will hear arose in my head. The album represents me as a composer, not only as a singer. The name of the record corresponds to facts, becase fans will get to know what lay beneath deep in me.

Floor: Did you really cope with the composing process on your own?
Tarja: I was in touch with some musicians who had helped me with my first CD. I collaborated mainly with an American composer Johnny Andrews, who helped me to put together material which turned out to be the strongest. Johnny is extremely talented and I reckon we´ll work together in the future again.

Floor: Yor productivity was claimed by the fact you managed to put together more than 20 songs this time. Where did you get the energy from?
Tarja: Everything started two years ago when the title of the album was born. It was such a big inspiration for me, that I immediately wanted to start working. It has nothing to do with the legendary American movie, but with the fantasy story of Naiad. I was so influenced by it that I started to think in many levels. I was pondering what was hiding under the surface of people and reflecting on it from different perspectives. I combined the worlds of mystery and reality, because nobody knows the real essence of things.

Floor: That´s interesting. Could you specify the author of the story?
Tarja: It´s a creation by Brasilian writer Paul Coelho. I´m his loyal fan and own perhaps all the books he´s ever released. His books are timeless and I love returning to them. The way how you perceive his pieces changes everytime you read them. Thanks to him I understood myself better and was able to prioritize my life values. When I looked on my past, I realised I had digged into the negative sides of life too much and forgotten about the positive ones. I was able to get rid of all the bad things and now I can say they´re not a part of me anymore. I signified it also in my lyrics, but they aren´t only about the good. Moreover, I gave the listeners the space to pick the lyrics´ meanings out themselves. I´m convinced it will deepen their relation to the whole album.

Floor: I must agree with you again, because I´m not able to compose without a distinctive impulse either. When I start working, I try to put a part of my own identity into it too. Gradually more and more motifs are wrapped around the basic one and the hole thing becomes a never-ending process. But let´s go back to your new album. You recorded the symphonical arrangements with The Slovak Orchestra. I think you had a lot of options to choose from so why just Slovaks?
Tarja: That´s related to James Dooley, who wrote the orchestral arrangements. During the recording of My Winter Storm we became good friends and I´m grateful I have such a good relationship with him. He´s a very appreciated composer in Hollywood. There he works for great movie productions and thanks to it he knows almost every big orchestra in the world. He collaborates with The Prague Philharmony as well as with The Slovak National Orchestra. It was his suggestion, to use the services of Slovak symphonists. I knew they had a good reputation so I couldn´t reject. I think it was a great choice because I could feel the enthusiasm on both sides and that always affects the recording in a way.

Floor: Beside The Slovak Orchestra you collaborated with the symphonists from Lahti. It makes me wonder whether the new album won´t be more classical than metal?
Tarja: I can´t explicitly classify it. It´s simply something in between classical music and rock (laughs). It´s related to my personality. I´m not a musician of one genre, music is a means of expression for me and I need more genres and options for it. I couldn´t simply focus only on rock. It´s also a challenge for my fans, how they can endorse with such amount of alternatives.

Floor: I think it´s better when a person can be multiformer as a composer too. People find it easier when they can label your music, but they should also understand that there are musicians whose style can´t be explicitly defined. After all, it would be easier to write only meatl music for me too, but still I would have the need to express myself also in other ways. 
Tarja: One should also count with the thing it´s a question of a moment. I feel I need to fulfil myself in many different music styles these days. But it´s not written anywhere it will remain like that forever. The time when I´ll write only rock or classical music might come too. 

Floor: You´ve mentioned you find the band you went on the last tour with to be your regular band in some interviews. But the drums were recorded not only by Mike Terrana (Masterplan), but also by Will Calhoun (Living Colour). 
Tarja: My decisions were based on feelings of each song and Will simply matched them better than Mike in some songs. Living Colour and I had known each other very well already from the tour and I took a liking on Will´s style of playing there. He sounds simply different than Mike. It was amusing to observe Mike when he saw Will recording. He was sitting directly in the studio and was delighted with Will´s playing. He was running around the studio and marveled probably at every single stroke of him. I wish everyone could see it. He acted like a small child. Mike is a fan of Will´s works so he couldn´t wait to see him in the studio. Both of them discussed drums and styles of playing for a very long time. The parts Mike recorded were naturally more rock/metal ones. 

Floor: The final mixing of the song doesn´t take place in one place, I´ve heard you mixed some songs in Los Angeles and now you´re working in Austin. Why so many different places? 
Tarja: I´ll sum it up more precisely. The first mixes were done by Colin Richardson in London. Only then I flew to L.A. and mixed some stuff with Slamm Andrews. The final mixing is a task of Tim Palmer from Texas. I´ll repeat myself but the deciding was based upon needs of every song. It was my own intention to let various producers mix various songs. That´s the only way how to achieve a perfect result. I think it would me difficult to find one person with experience with so many different music styles. Therefore it was better to speak to more people who would know what to do in their own sphere and do the job properly. However there was one important conditio- the whole album must sound like mixed by only one person. It would be disturbing if each song had a different level of drums, guitars or vocals. The choosing of sound engineers was very delicate and mainly uncompromising. 

Floor: Who was the biggest influence for you in your family, who developed your relation to music in you? 
Tarja: It was definitely my mother. She was repeating to me that I had to learn, that I had to practise all day long. I played the piano when I was thee or four for the first time. That time they found out I probably had the gift and arranged private music lessons for me. I could be six when I started attending the studies of music and I must appreciate my parents´patience. They drove me to a 30-kilometre far-off school 5 days a week. There I learnt both singing and playing the piano, I even used to play the flute. I´m bound to my parents for becoming a professional musician. They´ve always supported me. 

Floor: Which schools did you go to? 
Tarja: I started to attend the first real lessons when I was about nine and I played the flute there. My wish was to play the cello, though. Unfortunately there was nobody who taught cello playing there so I moved to flute. Later I joined the local choir and went in for the history of music. I had to leave home when I was 15, because there was no conservatory in the neighbourhood. I was fifteen, didn´t have much money and usually ate only apples. I was a typical example of a poor student. But I didn´t think about it this way. I enjoyed my freedom and every day was exciting for me. 

Floor: It´s interesting how much we have in common, because when I was seven, I started to play flute, exactly like you. When did you start attending to singing? 
Tarja: Later on the university. It was rather difficult there and I had to behave really responsibly. But another interesting things came. Above all I received the offer of Nightwish. I lived in Germany and studied in Karlsruhe for the next four years. Even though I met a wonderful teacher there, it was hard. I had to learn everything from the beginning, I was only a newie again. 

Floor: What music did you listen to when you were a child and when did you take interest in rock and metal music? 
Tarja: It was mainly pop and classic in my childhood. Apart from that I was influenced mainly by music I studied. I didn´t have much space to follow other genres. When I learnt to opera, I was overwhelmed with opera. When we had church chorals in the school curriculum, I addicted myself to church chorals. It was difficult to come off. I got in touch with rock music mainly in my teens, I could be about 14. As I´ve already said, it was related to the gained freedom. I met a lot of great and diverse people who didn´t have to worry about anything pointless and enjoyed their life. I prefered mostly bands like Alice Cooper, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi or Guns n´ Roses. 

Floor: How did you behave as a child? Were you calm and shy or a wild girl? 
Tarja: I think I was something between it. I was no quitter, but either extremely different. I was a good student. School was important for me and I devoted all my free time to it. I was anxious when I had troubles with something. I immediately tried to surmount them. After all, I do that today too. Of course I did some crazy things when I was a child but there weren´t any bigger pickles. 

Floor: Did you have any idol? 
Tarja: In my childhood it was definitely Whitney Houston. I was ten when I heard her singing and it made me almost crazy. I wanted to have all her albums and sung her songs till kingdom come. I was sad that I wasn´t able to hit all the high notes and I tried it again and again. She´s still the lady of pop music for me. No matter how the media have presented her later. 

Floor: Why did you decide to join Nightwish at the age of 19? You had the career of an opera singer in front of you, but you got down to something completely unknown. 
Tarja: It was a chance. All of a sudden there was something new, exciting, somethng I´d never done before. When I was sent the first demo, it was a quite different style of music than we started to play later. Originally it was an acoustic project based upon guitar and keyboards. The we went to studio for the first time and the boys were purely shocked. They´d known me as a girl who could sung nicely, but not as an opera singer. As soon as I started up the first phrases, they were dumbfounded. They didn´t understand anything for a while, but as soon as they got over it, they started to think how to use my potential. Then the idea to mix my voice with heavy metal came and it really worked. It invoked a similar reaction of more experienced musicians too. We brought up new ways and opportunities to metal music. It was great to hear all the praise and appreciation. I fell in love with Nightwish´s music from the first moment and I respected it. It holds true also today, I´ve never stopped loving their music. During the time I spent with the band, I never thought much of where I could have been if I had gone my own way. I was convinced I did the right thing and even after all the things which happened I think those were one of the best moments of my life. 

Floor: I´ve often been asked what would I do if I didn´t earn my living by music, didn´t have my band. I´ve never been able to answer because I couldn´t even imagine it. All the decisions I´ve ever made were influenced by music. I can hardly think in other way. 
Tarja: Whole life is about choices. They´re our decisions, we choose our own way. We decide in a certain moment which is influenced by a lot of facts. Therefore we shouldn´t doubt of ourselves, if we decide with an inneral feeling that our choice is right. It shows itself in music even more. It´s only a hobby for someone, but for us it´s a life prority. I´m addicted to people who can appreciate my work. If a person is at least a bit successful, it can be found to be a gift and we should treat it with respect. 

Floor: Do you have any message for readers? 
Tarja: I´m very looking forward to coming to the Czech Republic and to the concert on the festival Masters of Rock. Czechs are wonderful and unbelievably supporting. I miss them a lot.

English translation: Daniela, from Tarja Turunen Czech Republic