SYMFONIA, the new band featuring Timo Tolkki (ex-STRATOVARIUS), Andre Matos (ex-ANGRA), Jari Kainulainen (ex-Stratovarius / ex-EVERGREY), Mikko Härkin (ex-SONATA ARCTICA) and Uli Kusch (ex-HELLOWEEN), have launched a new website at this location. They have issued the following message:

"None of these musicians need an introduction. They are all legends among the melodic metal community.

By sheer coincidence, they all found themselves living on the same continent, in Scandinavia. They decided to join forces and express their talents in the form of a new melodic metal project: Symfonia.

Honoring the heritage of their previous bands Stratovarius, Helloween, Angra and Sonata Arctica, Symfonia continues their superb melodic metal tradition with an incredible musicianship that is a match made in heaven. This is a force that no serious melodic metal fan will be able to ignore. Symfonia will make its World Premiere on february 18th at the Finnish Metal Expo, an International Metal Meeting, where they will take the stage at 11:00pm in the evening.

The recordings for the debut album of Symfonia will start in November at Studio Mega in Sweden, for a Spring 2011 release."

Check out BW&BK;'s exclusive interview with Timo Tolkki here. An excerpt is available below.

“Everything with Symfonia has been very fast,” Tolkki reveals. “I don’t want to use the word ‘pre-destined’, but after Revolution Renaissance I said, ‘That’s it, I’m opening the flower store…’ (laughs). It’s a weird story. It all started with Andre Matos because someone told me that he’s living in Sweden now, in a village of something like 2,000 people. He comes from Sao Paulo, a city of 25 million people. I began thinking about it, that I had one of the best power metal vocalists practically living next to me. I know the guy very well, and I had nothing to do. I gave him a call and asked if he wanted to write some music, and Andre came to visit me in Helsinki. He spent the week here, went to sauna – where I showed the Brazilian what ‘hot’ really means (laughs) – and we worked on some music.”
“The next one was Jari. Everybody thinks he was fired from Stratovarius (in 2005) but he actually decided to leave on his own for personal reasons. He’s living in Norway now. I never had problems with him because Jari has this kind of Buddhist philosophy, and I always told him that I wished I could be like him (laughs). After he left EVERGREY (earlier this year) he was in another band, and the strange thing was he left that band on a Tuesday and I emailed him by chance on the Wednesday. I had no idea he didn’t have a band. We talked for about three hours on the phone and I felt like I was in a time warp, because I hadn’t seen him in five years. It really wasn’t a big issue having him come on board.”
“After I had Andre and Jari on board I went back and listened to my whole discography from beginning to end. I actually had to borrow the CD (laughs) because I didn’t have any of them. I tried to get a picture of what I’ve done so far, and I came to the conclusion that I need to crystallize what I’m all about. With these guys I can do that.”

(Photos by Jussi Eerola)