Arja Koriseva

Arja Koriseva (born 21 April 1965) is a Finnish singer. She first came to fame as a tango singer; her repertoire now includes evergreen, pop, musical theatre, and sacred music.

Koriseva has sold over 330,000 certified records, making her the seventh best-selling female soloist in Finland. Koriseva said of the village school she attended:

“The school was very small and homey; my class had just three pupils. We were good in different subjects and learned a lot from each other. Because we were so few, the classes were joined so that the first and second were together, the third and fourth similarly, and so on. During the breaks we went swimming; on Shrove Tuesday we tobogganed. The cook baked pulla buns and brought them to us with juice as a snack. In fine weather, we had lessons outside and when it was raining, we did sums in class. Once a storm blew down a birch tree in the school yard, we made firewood from it and carried them inside.” (Nyman, p. 51)

Koriseva comes from a musical family: her parents were both active in the church choir, and the harmonikka player, Erkki Friman, is Koriseva's maternal uncle (The Finnish harmonikka is not a mouth organ. It is a kind of accordion, with symmetrically arranged buttons instead of piano keys. It is not the same instrument as a bandoneon).

Koriseva and her sister/fellow singer, Eija (b. 31 October 1963), sang with the Peräkylä Boys band in youth hostels, holiday camps, restaurants and various other places in central Finland from 1978. When the Peräkylä Boys broke up to continue their studies, the Koriseva sisters created a new band, Kastanja (“Chestnut”).

Note that Koriseva's sister, Eija, is not the same Eija Koriseva, who is a mathematics professor at the University of Helsinki.

In 1983, Koriseva was admitted to the Central Finland Conservatory to study music.

In the summer of 1984, Koriseva was a Lions Club scholarship student in Wilmar, Minneapolis, United States. She returned after three years for a summer with the same family. She said of this time:

“The family was quite wonderful and treated me like their own daughter. The father acted as teacher in the agricultural school and farmed maize. On the second visit I already had a driving licence and got the use of an old pick-up. I woke up early in the morning, put on a long-sleeved shirt and drove to the edge of the field to gather corncobs. In the field I prepared and packed them in dozens in cartons, then I had a shower and drove the corncobs to the shops. I could keep the money from the sales.” (Nyman, p 54)

This was a very appropriate job for a future tango star, as the classic tango El Choclo, written by Ángel Villoldo in 1903, means "the corncob". Meanwhile, Kastanja became the backing group for Marjo-Riitta Nieminen, who sings under the stage name Marjorie.

In 1985, Koriseva enrolled in the Hämeenlinna teacher training college and got qualified in 1989, specialising in PE and Finnish language.

In the spring of 1989, with her mother's encouragement, Koriseva entered the Tangomarkkinat singing competition. She engaged a new orchestra, Fortuna, and began to rehearse the tangos Kultaiset korvarenkaat and Vie meidät rakkauteen. These are not in fact Finnish tangos: the first is Golden Earrings, composed by Victor Young and the theme song of the film of the same name, the second is Tango d´Amour, by Leo Leandros.

After passing the preliminary heats, Koriseva applied for a temporary teaching post in case she was not successful at the Tangomarkkinat finals.

Dressed in a stage gown made by her sister Eija, she became the Tango Queen at her first attempt and turned the Tangomarkkinat from a local festival to an event of national importance. The Tangomarkkinat organisers tried to get her to adopt the stage name Arja Karen, as koriseva means "wheezing" in Finnish.

Since then, Koriseva has recorded 15 albums (up to September 2007), and appeared in concerts and at dance halls all over Finland, as well as Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Jordan, and the UK. She has sung sacred music in church concerts, and appeared with Belgian superstar Helmut Lotti. She appears frequently on Finnish TV: she was a guest on the musical game show BumtsiBum! several times; she and Joel Hallikainen presented the musical game show Jos sais kerran in 2002–2003; and she was the heroine in the children's programme Hilarius and Loru-Liisa, with a giant mouse. She was the Finnish voice of Pocahontas in the animated film and TV series of that name. She has appeared in the soap opera Prince of Pop and in Ready Steady Cook. Koriseva has returned to the Tangomarkkinat several times as judge, and presented in 1991, 1994, and 2004. The spectacular Eyes of an Angel concert of 1999 was broadcast on national TV. She has attempted four times to represent Finland at the Eurovision Song Contest (1991, 1992, 1993, 2004), but has never been selected.

Koriseva has also appeared on stage: she was Liza in "My Fair Lady" and Maria in "Sound of Music". The run of the latter had to be cut short because Arja was 8 months pregnant.

On 2 November 2015, Koriseva was diagnosed with breast cancer.