TARJA TURUNEN (ex-NIGHTWISH) has issued the following blog entry:

My Xmas tour is happily over. The concert in Seinäjoki was a great success and it was just wonderful to sing in the famous church of Lakeuden risti, which is designed by Alvar Aalto. The acoustics in that church is amazing. I felt like singing in a huge cathedral.

People seemed to be happy to receive us there and we saw that many music lovers attended the event. It was sad though to end the successful tour with Kalevi, Marzi and Markku, but I am sure we will be working together pretty soon again. I wish them all best of luck for their new challenges. I also want to thank for the great collaboration once again. It was fantastic opportunity to sing with you guys!

I had two days of rehearsals with the orchestra Globalis and conductor Anton Shaburov.

It was great to see how enthusiastic the players were to play my songs. I was truly surprised by their attitude and talent.

The venue was not exactly what I had in my mind for an Xmas concert with an orchestra, but the local promoters wanted to make the show there. I discovered that not many people were aware that I was going to perform an Xmas concert program!!

I still hope people were happily surprised by my concert.

The night itself was an amazing experience for me personally, since is always beautiful to sing in front of an orchestra and the audience was just overwhelmingly warm to us. So many smiles and happy faces!

Thank you once again Russia for a great support and love. As I promised, I will be back very soon with my new album and band.

Thanks Tommi for the gorgeous lights and Pete for the crystal clear sound! Here we stopped at the Kremlin after the concert and few glasses of red wine.

Now there is no time to waste; even a day, since I am going to be working hard with the new songs for What Lies Beneath. Next time I’ll write about how things are going with the album pre-production. Exciting times ahead of us!

I wish you all happy Christmas and a great ending for this year. Thank you for being there for me."

Check out more photos at this location.