Former NIGHTWISH singer TARJA TURUNEN's camp has announced the bands that will support Tarja during her What Lies Beneath European tour.

France's MARKIZE will support on December 7th in Hämeenlinna and December 9th in Tampere, Finland. French bands KELLS and BENIGHTED SOUL will join Tarja on December 15th in Luxembourg, December 17th and 18th in Slovakia, December 20th in Austria and December 21st in Italy.

Germany's FREEDOM CALL will support on December 17th and 18th in Slovakia.

Tarja's complete live itinerary can be found at this location.

Tarja recently issued the following update:

"Let me say that I was not the only Finn whose face got serious when the plane landed at the airport in Helsinki. Why on earth our ancestors decided to stay here and make a living in such cold place? I don’t get it. Yesterday, -9° and today it is snowing a lot.

Nevertheless, the white blanket and the silence that comes with it, is beautiful. Something to miss while traveling through very different sceneries.

Well, here I am anyway trying to survive without getting cold before my Xmas and forthcoming rock shows.

I love this idea I started some years ago of 'coming home for Christmas' mood. Ending the year in Finland and offering some church concerts is always relaxing for mind and soul.

The music in my Christmas concerts is really different compared with what I’ve been doing these last months. It’s a nice refreshing change.

ALICE COOPER tour was an awesome experience. Mr. Cooper himself was so kind and told me many nice and supportive words about my singing and music. I truly hope to see him once again in the near future. I want to thank him and his talented crew and band for this great opportunity. It was fun!

When I read for the first time that we were going to have a show in the city of Bamberg, Germany, I thought that this might be just another small, normal, regular German city. I was SO wrong. It is indeed such a beautiful, old city. It was wonderful to walk around the old part of the city, take some pictures like a real tourist. Even the weather was perfect on that day!

Here I am (photo above) in my backstage signing 500 photos for a special box set of What Lies Beneath that will be coming out very soon! I am sure you will be informed about it in my web page.

I named it the Dreamer’s Box Set.

It was a nice surprise for me to receive James Kottak (SCORPIONS) visiting our show in Berlin during the tour. I met him last time in Buenos Aires where I was another Scorpion’s fan at their show in Luna Park. Thanks James for coming to say hello!

I had a really rough time in Paris with the album promotion after my amazing show in Zurich. It was just so lovely to sing for Swiss people once again.

I had to leave almost right after the show to Paris by train. The whole next day I spent talking about What Lies Beneath that is finally going to be released in France via XIII Bis Records on 29th of November. I am very happy. Thanks to my patient and loyal French fans.

I didn’t remember how beautiful and old the city of Lyon is. Last time my visit in Lyon was in 2005 and then there was NO time at all to look around. There was not enough time for it this time either, I must say. Though I had a chance to walk a bit around the old city and I was blown away.

I had a nice signing session there with my kind fans. There were even some people from Africa and USA coming to say hi to a Finnish person in France…'sometimes I wonder.'

Another part of this tour is over and everything is packed and we are ready to move on.

I’ll see you soon in my Christmas concerts here in the cold winter wonderland."