Vous trouverez des photos de NIGHTWISH à New York le 2 mai 2009

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Tarja Turunen était en concert à Montréal le 1er mai 2009. Voici la set-list du concert :

1. Boy & The Ghost
   02. Lost Northern Star
   03. My Little Phoenix
   04. Passion & The Opera
   05. The Seer
   06. Dead Gardens
   07. I Walk Alone
   08. Ciaran's Well
   09. Sing For Me
   10. Nemo
   11. Enough
   12. Minor - Reign - Oasis
   13. Poison
   14. Wishmaster
   15. Die Alive
   16. Calling Grace
   17. Over The Hills And Far Away

Vous trouverez des photos ici :

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Le 26 mai 2009 au Whisky A Go Go à Los Angeles aura lieu un concert en hommage de Michelle Meldrum. Les invités setont : Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead), Rocky George (Fishbone/Suicidal Tendencies), Nick Oliveri (Queens of the Stone Age, Mondo Generator), Jason McMaster (WatchTower/Dangerous Toys), John Norum (Europe/Dokken), Chuck Wright (Quiet Riot), Phil Varone (Saigon Kick/Skid Row).

Plus d'info ici :

Site Michelle Meldrum

Tarja went to La Nave de Oseberg for an intense day of radio, interviews and photoshoots with several media, including the local fan club. While sitting at the table, and the microphones and the technical things of the studio were being fixed for the show of Cesar Fuentes Rodriguez (the same studio where Rata Blanca recorded their last albums) the Finnish star, today mostly based in Buenos Aired, started the fire with us and sent warm greetings to Heavy Rock and to her Spanish fans. To the fire of the eternal quality of her simplicity and ease, here are the outgoing moments of an interview without waste.

You have been touring for over one year. Do you feel changed as an artist?

Tarja: I feel a lot more confident after this first stage. I have grown a lot as an artist, as a singer and as a person. I can use this advantage to be aware of the trends and happy that I might have a future! [laughs] I can compose at a more intense pace, and with this freedom gives me the feeling that I am at the beginning of my career, and not like some kind of epilogue of my previous career.

Are you happy to be "your own boss"?

Tarja: It has its advantages, why should I deny. The debate of ideas and the reception of suggestions have always been fruitful, but I have a lot more creative freedom now, and now it is the exact moment of my career when I think I should be capitalizing as much as I can. I feel more respected by the people I work with, which is of utmost importance.

What did you learn that you hadn't while you were with Nightwish?

Tarja: The perch in my short career is everything I think and feel and that I get to listen to my work without any kind of filter. For me this was a major turn from my relashionship with Nightwish.

Now that you have more control on what you are composing did you find new sources of inspiration?

Tarja: Generally I think I find inspiration in what most artists do: facts or situations that change me in good or bad, nice things or transcendent emotional content. The great thing is that now I have the freedom to chose if I want to compose or take things from me clean out, or the other way around, simply improvising with my voice, the piano or the music that surrounds me.

Which are the external stimuli? Did, for example, the recent tragedies in Finnish schools, similar to the massacre from Colombia from 1999, move you?

Tarja: Of course, those are two very sad things that affected us all in Finland. It is supposed that we are a good country, but tragedies like these reveal social problems, latent in our culture. We have high standards of live, but we drag (especially my generation and the generation of my parents) a legacy of war which had its effect on the last decades. Either our last war [N.R with Russia] in 1939 or with a neutral nation trapped in a conflict between the great European powers, is a thing that we have failed to resolve completely even until today. I think that this closed mentality is due to the reluctance to bring to the surface and openly discuss all of these symptoms to remove the dirt under the carpet, in a nutshell. This is a problem that I haven't seen in most anglo-saxon countries like the U.S., not to mention Argentina, where there is a lot more communication between people.

In the last years, many metal bands - especially from Europe - started to combine classical music and metal. Has it gotten to a point where you can't innovate it more? How do you approach your work so that it will sound fresh?

Tarja: This is a problem that has become complicated in the compositional level for all the bands that fused heavy metal with orchestral arrangements. Both genres definitely share the grandiloquent element, and the relative ease of incorporating voices in operas, but the things start to get complicated immediately. It is difficult to unite the sound of an orchestra with appropiate heavy metal instruments, without one of them covering the other. Practically you can't sacrifice the power of electric guitars or the power of the orchestra or an operatic voice. Those are two powerful elements, but they are also very different. My approach that I find at the moment most comfortable while composing is to basically eliminate all the elements that "eat" the original sound. This means: the orchestra alone, or the sound of guitars without the orchestra, maybe leaving some background harmonies, or the most proeminent leitmotives. This is exactly the step forward that I want to take in my next album. In less words: the orchestra, or the heavy guitars, but less fusion between them.

What else can you tell us about the next album?

Tarja: It is called "What Lies Beneath", I have composed about thirty songs, but I don't know how many will be included on the CD. I will enter the studio in the end of this year, even though this is the last stretch of this tour, which will include three or four shows here in Buenos Aires in May.

With so many projects going on, do you still have enough time for classical music?

Tarja: I am very involved in the classical music. I have plans to go on a tour this year, sharing the stage with a tenor. What makes me happy about this kind of music is that I can focus in particular better on my voice. It allows me to notice what needs adjustment. But at the same time I have to confess that I don't feel ready for performing a whole opera. That time will definitely come, but at the moment there is a lot that needs to be polished. Anyway, I am practising every day, for all styles, not just classical, but I have to admit my intention of enhancing the ambience of each disc.

What do you have to say about the way female fronted bands have proliferated in the operatic style?

Tarja: It is a very strange phenomenon, every time more bands and people full of talent, like Liv Kristine among many others. Some time ago I was at a gothic metal festival in Leipzig (Germany) as a headliner and it was a very interesting experience, I met many singers and found out more about them. 10-12 years ago when I started to sing with Nightwish I knew there were many singers like these, but not as many as now. I am proud for some moments, I was proud and astonished at the same time to see how many of these bands were female fronted! I asked myself "What the hell has happened here?" [laughs]

What do you think about the new sound of Nightwish, with such a different voice?

Tarja: I wish them all the best. This is all I will say on this matter.

What impact do you think Nightwish had on your style?

Tarja: What happened with all the other artists, what is ultimately reflected in my music is always a bit far from my original vision. In my case, it is impossible to put the metal elements aside. I definitely realized that I tend to sound more like American heavy metal than the European heavy metal sound, marked by Nightwish. This is because of the music that I listen to - Korn and Slipknot to give some examples - but this does not get in the way ofmy European origins, in fact I will do everything possible to have the producer of In Flames' latest labum, for the album that will follow after "What Lies Beneath".

Do you think that you will gradually get rid of the Nightwish material in your shows after you reach more musical age?

Tarja: Not at all. Nightwish was a big part of my life and a part of it will always be in my shows. But in time there could be less and less, after all they are Tarja shows, not Nightwish. Of course there are metal fans at my concerts, and they are welcome, but since I started my solo career in Europe I noticed that there are also people who discovered my music in other ways, and who appreciate the atmosphere of the music and the live staging, or the melancholy, there's always the backdrop to my compositions and the cover art in booklet. There have also veen more "orthodox" metal fans, who told me that they had discovered a new side of metal in "My Winter Storm". I was very proud.

In retrospective, was a mistake to lead the lifestyle of a heavy metal band for so many years?

Tarja: I have never seen heavy metal as a burden I have to cope with, because it allowed me to live. I have to say that it is definitely not easy to be a soprano singer in a heavy metal band, especially when everything was in an experimental phase. I had to learn, practice and experiment a lot so that things could work. And I also had to adapt to the lifestyle that comes "with the package": neverending tours, the fragile state of my vocal chords, being exposed to infections because of traveling together with so many people, etc. The good thing about composing and working in an independent way is that I can plan in advance and more freely how many gigs I want to have, when and how much free time to have between them. Being a boss of my own allows me to take more care about my health, which is the most important thing I have.

EUROPE a laissé un petit message dans son blog

Petite traduction express. Alors en gros, ils disent : qu'ils ont passé du temps à Stockholm à répéter pour leurs concerts en Amérique du Sud. Qu'être enfermé en studio est long et que ça fait du bien de répéter pour les concerts et en gros de reprendre les concerts. Ils trépignent quoi... ;-)

Quelques petites photos laissées sur leur blog :

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