Former NIGHTWISH members Tarja Turunen and Marko “Marco” Hietala are set to perform at a special open-air concert on July 8 at Z7 Summer Nights in Pratteln, Switzerland
The reunion of the two ex-NIGHTWISH members is set to be a massive event for fans of the band. As of this point, only the one date has been announced for the reunited duo.
Tarja was fired from NIGHTWISH after the band’s 2005 tour by being presented with an open letter which was also published on the band’s official website. The letter read: “To you, unfortunately, business, money, and things that have nothing to do with emotions have become much more important.”
NIGHTWISH keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen would later call the decision to let Turunen go “the most difficult thing I ever had to do.” Tarja said the way she was fired from NIGHTWISH proved that her former bandmates were not her friends.
Back in 2019, Tarja dismissed rumors that she was returning to NIGHTWISH after her December 2017 onstage reunion with the band’s then-bassist/vocalist Marko Hietala in Hämeenlinna, Finland.
“I know a lot of fans would love to see something happen, but it’s a very long distance away,” she told Kerrang! magazine. “Personally, I don’t see anything happening with me and them, to be perfectly honest. Marco came a little later into the band; he wasn’t there since the beginning. He was always a guy I was close to. Me and Tuomas Holopainen, however, haven’t seen each other in a long time… but we have been in touch. It’s not bad. The past is what it is; we can’t change that. We can only change the future.”
Just over a year ago, Tarja was asked in an interview if she would ever consider doing a tour with NIGHTWISH if her and her ex-bandmates were able to work things out. She responded: “It is very, very hypothetical that all what you said will happen, first of all — it’s very, very hypothetical.
“I’m living in a world, like we are all living in a world, that things happen without us noticing,” she continued. “I mean, I can’t really close any doors in that sense; I’m not that kind of person any longer. I learned so many things in this life already. I take them as they are.
“So I don’t know. It would be very hypothetically possible,” she added. “It would be unlikely to happen.”
Marko Hietala announced his departure from NIGHTWISH in January 2021, explaining in a statement that he hadn’t “been able to feel validated by this life for a quite a few years now.” He has since been replaced by session bassist Jukka Koskinen (WINTERSUN).
