Stratovarius frontman Timo Kotipelto is featured in a new interview with Finland's Kaaos TV, conducted on July 21st at the John Smith Rock Festival in Laukaa, Finland. In the clip below he discusses the band's plans for a new album, their upcoming tour with former Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen, and performing Stratovarius material acoustically.

Needless to say that one can await big things when the queen of heavy rock, the brightest star of the symphonic rock scene and certainly the most internationally well-known Finnish female voice in the world of music, Tarja Turunen and her band team up for a tour with one of the the most successful, enduring power metal bands in the world, who influenced a whole genre with heir distinguished mix of fast progressive metal and a melodic approach, symphonic metal originators Stratovarius.

Soprano, composer and songwriter, Tarja reached international fame co-founding and being for nine years the voice and image of the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish, collecting with them Gold and Platinum Record Awards in several countries. Leading into a not less successful solo career starting of in 2005 when Tarja started to walk alone. Since then she dedicates every December in bringing to Finland and abroad the magic of her Christmas shows. Plus Tarja’s flawless ability to blend rock and classic lead to several collaborations including Alice Cooper, Within Temptation, the German electronic artist Schiller, Doro Pesch and the British father of Tubular Bells Mike Oldfield.

But the unique synergy between Tarja’s classical and rock inspirations is fully expressed in her solo rock career. By now she released four multi-platinum and gold awarded albums My Winter Storm (2007), What Lies Beneath (2010) Colours In The Dark (2013) and the most recent ones The Brightest Void / The Shadow Self (2016). After the successful release of the unexpectedly dark album From Spirits And Ghosts (Score For A Dark Christmas) (2017) and the following Christmas shows, Tarja is ready to offer a closure for her recent heavy rock albums, with her second live video and CD. Following the same line of its predecessor, ACT II will be released in summer 2018.

Not less important, if not even more, than albums and collaborations, has been for Tarja to perform live on stage in front of her audience with more than 800 shows worldwide during her career so far.

It has been more than 30 years since Stratovarius got together - what started in 1985 under the name Black Water left a trail of 16 studio albums, ten Top 5 chart positions in their native country Finland and more than 40 top chart positions around the globe as well as over 30 years extensive touring world wide. With their distinguished mix of fast progressive metal and a melodic approach, symphonic metal originators Stratovarius became one of the most influential, successful and enduring power metal bands in the world.

After a few bumpy steps and stones in the band’s lineup, Stratovarius song writing found its peak in their recent studio works Elysium, Nemesis and Eternal. All milestones in sound, creativity and songwriting. It happens rarely nowadays, especially in metal, that a band creates one magic song after the other. Stratovarius are surely one of the few exceptions.

Recently Stratovarius presented their long awaited Best Of album, which included 29 hits and fan favorites (and there could have been more). As well as started a reissue campaign of all their 16 studio albums, with one of the band’s most successful and most loved albums Destiny (originally released in 1999) and the cult live album Visions Of Europe (originally released in 1998). The series will be continued in summer 2018 with the not less loved albums Episode (originally released in 1996) and Visions (originally released in 1997), again packed with rare and newly recorded bonus material.

Now these two major players from Finland have decided to go on A Nordic Symphony ‘18 Tour together. Dates and a video trailer can be found below.

A Nordic Symphony ‘18:

October
1 - Frankfurt, Germany - Batschkapp
2 - Kiel, Germany - Max
3 - Hannover, Germany - Capitol
5 - Karlsruhe, Germany - Substage
7 - Utrecht, Netherlands - TivoliVredenburg
9 - Bochum, Germany - Matrix
10 - Cologne, Germany - Essigfabrik
11 - Saarbrücken, Germany - Garage
13 - Solothurn, Switzerland - Kofmehl
14 - Grenoble, France - La Belle Electrique
16 - Rome, Italy - Orion
17 - Milan, Italy - Alcatraz
18 - Munich, Germany - Backstage
20 - Innsbruck, Austria - Music Hall
21 - Prague, Czech Republic - Forum Karlín
22 - Berlin, Germany - Festsaal Kreuzberg
24 - Gdansk, Poland - B90
25 - Krakow, Poland – Studio
26 - Dresden, Germany - Reithalle
28 - Budapest, Hungary – Barba Negra
29 - Sofia, Bulgaria - Universiada Sports Hall