TARJA TURUNEN Continuing To Write Material For New Solo Album

Former NIGHTWISH singer Tarja Turunen has has recorded three songs for a Finnish Christmas album, produced by Olli Ahvenlahti. According to Turunen, this is "a charity project for missionary workers in Finland and it is going to be released in the beginning of November in Finland."

In other news, Tarja has been busy writing new songs for her new solo album with Johnny Andrews. She says, "We wrote a song few months ago when I was in L.A. and now we did it again in Finland."

She continues, "The biggest difference with 'My Winter Storm' [Tarja's first solo album] probably is that at that time, we recorded all the songs that I was happy with. And we had no leftovers! Everything went into the album, one way of another. But now, the feeling is a bit different. Having so much material to choose from is making things difficult… Is a new and nice challenge. Is quite hard to leave songs out of the album as all the songs have a special meaning to me."

Turunen has announced the lineup of her band for the "Final Storm Tour 2009", which is scheduled to kick off on September 19 at the Elf Fantasy Fair in Arcen, Netherlands. It is as follows:

* Tarja Turunen - Voice
* Mike Terrana (MASTERPLAN, SAVAGE CIRCUS, RAGE, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN) - Drums
* Christian Kretschmar (SCHILLER) - Keyboards
* Oliver Holzwarth (BLIND GUARDIAN, SIEGES EVEN) - Bass
* Alex Scholpp (FARMER BOYS) - Guitar
* Max Lilja (HEVEIN, APOCALYPTICA) - Cello

For a list of dates, go to this location.

Video footage of Tarja Turunenperforming at the Baltic Sea Festival in Sweden on August 28, 2009 can be viewed below.

Tarja Turunen has set "What Lies Beneath" as the working title of her new solo CD, tentatively due in early 2010. She says, "With [2007's] 'My Winter Storm', I chose the name of the album in the early stages and that helped me to create the concept for the album. With the new album, I decided to do it the same way, so I searched for an inspiring title and all the songs are one way or another related to it."