IN: Tarja Soile Susanna Turunen-Cabuli (born 17 August 1977), known professionally as Tarja Turunen or simply Tarja, is a Finnish singer-songwriter. She is a soprano and has a vocal range of three octaves. Turunen studied singing at Sibelius Academy and Hochschule fur Musik Karlsruhe. She is a professional classical lied singer, and the former lead vocalist of the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish, which she founded with Tuomas Holopainen and Emppu Vuorinen in 1996.

Tarja Turunen was born in the small village of Puhos, near Kitee, Finland. She has an older brother, Timo, and a younger brother, Toni. Her mother Ritva Sisko Marjatta (Hakkarainen) worked in the town administration, and her father Teuvo Turunen is a carpenter. Her talent for music was first noted when she sang the song "Enkeli taivaan" (the Finnish version of "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come") in the Kitee church hall at age three. She joined the church choir and started taking vocal lessons. At age six, she started playing piano. At comprehensive school, Turunen performed as a singer for several projects. Her first piano teacher Kirsti Nortia-Holopainen, "Tarja was in a school that had some very musical people. Even then she got to perform a lot. I think she sang in every school function there was." Her music teacher, Plamen Dimov, later explained that, "If you gave Tarja just one note, she immediately got it. With the others, you'd have to practice three, four, five times". At school she had a tough time, since some girls bullied her because they envied her voice. To solve that problem, Dimov organized projects outside school. At fifteen, Turunen had her first major appearance as a soloist at a church concert in front of a thousand listeners. In 1993 she attended the Senior Secondary School of Art and Music in Savonlinna. For several years Turunen performed various songs including soul music by Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin. Later she listened to songs from the classical crossover singer Sarah Brightman, especially the song "The Phantom of the Opera", and decided to focus on that genre of music. At eighteen, she moved to Kuopio to study at the Sibelius Academy.

Was she vocally trained?

OUT: Her music teacher, Plamen Dimov, later explained that, "If you gave Tarja just one note, she immediately got it.

IN: Michael Anthony Orlando Cassavitis (born April 3, 1944), known professionally as Tony Orlando, is an American singer, songwriter, producer, music executive, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the group Tony Orlando and Dawn in the 1970s. Orlando formed the doowop group The Five Gents in 1959 at the age of 15, with whom he recorded demos, and got the attention of music publisher and producer Don Kirshner. Kirshner hired him to songwrite at 1650 Broadway, Manhattan as part New York's thriving Brill Building songwriting community, along with other songwriters Carole King, Neil Sedaka, Toni Wine, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, and Tom and Jerry, who didn't make it in the office until they later changed their name to Simon and Garfunkel. Orlando was also hired to sing on songwriter demos, and singles released with Orlando as a solo artist began to hit the charts in the US and the UK beginning in 1961 with "Halfway to Paradise" and "Bless You" when he was 16.

Orlando was tempted back to a recording career when he was asked to record a demo record of "Candida", with backup singers including Toni Wine (who wrote the song) and Linda November. Concerned about a possible conflict of interest with his April-Blackwood duties, Orlando sang under the condition that his name not be associated with the project, so it was released under the simple name of "Dawn", the middle name of the daughter of Bell records executive Steve Wax. The song became a hit, and Dawn, with Wine and November again singing backup, recorded another song, "Knock Three Times", which itself became a #1 hit. Orlando then wanted to go on tour, and asked two other session singers, Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson to join for the tour. Orlando then discovered that there were six touring groups using that name, so Dawn became "Dawn featuring Tony Orlando", which changed to Tony Orlando and Dawn in 1973. The new group recorded more hits, including "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" (1973) and "He Don't Love You (Like I Love You)" (1975), a cover of the Jerry Butler hit, "He Will Break Your Heart". With a successful recording career, Orlando then set his sights on television. As described in The San Francisco Chronicle, "Tony Orlando and Dawn burst out of television sets during the Ford administration, a sunny antidote to the dark cynicism that followed Watergate. He represented simple, traditional values, a conservative return to pure entertainment. He drew a happy face in the "O" of his autograph. It was not terribly cool, but America loved him." The Tony Orlando and Dawn Show on CBS became a hit, a summer replacement for the Sonny & Cher show, and ran for four seasons from 1973 to 1976. It welcomed the biggest names in show business each week as Orlando's guests, including his boyhood idols, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Lewis. At the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, Orlando danced to the tune of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" with then First Lady Betty Ford. The media stated that it was to divert attention as Nancy Reagan entered the Kemper Arena convention hall. However, in Orlando's book Halfway to Paradise, he states that Mrs. Reagan was asked what her favorite song was, which happened to be "Tie a Yellow Ribbon", so it was chosen as her entrance song. Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully challenged Gerald Ford, for the presidential nomination that year but came back in 1980 to claim the presidency itself. Ray Barnhart, a Reagan co-manager from Texas, criticized Mrs. Ford for having "danced a jig" with Orlando. Barbara Staff, another Texas co-chairman, called Betty Ford's behavior "a low, cheap shot". It was later confirmed that the Ford campaign slipped the song to the band when Nancy Reagan entered the hall. On October 12, 2015, with Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson present, Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters honored Orlando with their Art Gilmore Career Achievement Award at a celebrity luncheon.

Why the name Dawn?

OUT:
Orlando sang under the condition that his name not be associated with the project, so it was released under the simple name of "Dawn",