📍Kitee, North Karelia, Finland
1977 – 1995“Tarja Soile Susanna Turunen was born in August 1977 in Puhos, a small village in the municipality of Kitee, in the forests and lakes of North Karelia, in eastern Finland, near the Russian border. She grew up there with her two brothers, in a quiet, rural world of birch forests, lakes and long winters, and she sang from a very young age, including at the local church, where her voice amazed the congregation. She began studying music at six, learning piano and singing, and she took part in choirs and school performances, singing everything from hymns to folk songs to pop. Her teachers saw her extraordinary voice and encouraged her to study classical singing. Kitee was a small town, and one of her schoolmates there was Tuomas Holopainen, a keyboard player who would change her life. At eighteen she moved to Kuopio to study at the music conservatory, and then to the Sibelius Academy, where she trained as a classical soprano. In 1996 Tuomas invited her to sing on an acoustic project, and when he heard her powerful classical voice, he decided to make it a metal band: Nightwish, founded in Kitee with Emppu Vuorinen. With albums such as Oceanborn and Once, Nightwish became one of the most successful symphonic metal bands in the world, and Tarja helped create the style of operatic metal singing. Since 2005 she has had a successful solo career in both metal and classical music. Kitee is proud to be the home of Nightwish and of the girl from Puhos with the soprano voice.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today