Ako Kiiski

Ako Kiiski — Finnish bassist — is part of the band accompanying Tarja Turunen since the start of her solo career. Tarja's work after Nightwish is notably heterogeneous: symphonic metal, song with orchestra, classical repertoire, Christmas records. That means the rhythm section must operate in contexts of completely different weight and volume — from the heavy metal of The Shadow Self (2016) to arrangements in which the bass practically disappears beneath strings and piano. It is work of reading context as much as of execution. Knowing when to occupy space and when to draw back is what lets a band accompany a singer whose voice is the central element of everything she records. Tarja left Nightwish in 2005, when the band was at its peak, and has since built a discography of ten albums of her own. The permanence of the same musicians across that period — Kiiski among them — has given her solo career a consistency that projects of this kind rarely achieve.