Arja Koriseva
| Arja Koriseva | |
|---|---|
Koriseva at the 2004 Tangomarkkinat
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Arja Sinikka Koriseva |
| Also known as | Aikku |
| Born |
21 April 1965 Toivakka, Finland |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1989-present |
| Associated acts | Eija Koriseva |
| Website | arjakoriseva |
Arja Koriseva (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.
During her career, Koriseva has sold over 330,000 certified records, which makes her the seventh-best-selling female soloist in Finland.
Arja says 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 we 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 it inside.” (Nyman, p. 51)
Arja comes from a musical family: her parents were both active in the church choir, and the harmonikka player Erkki Friman is Arja’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).
Arja and her sister and 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, Eija and Arja got a new band, Kastanja (“Chestnut”).
Note that Arja's sister Eija is not the same Eija Koriseva who is professor of mathematics at the University of Helsinki.
In 1983 Arja was admitted to the Central Finland Conservatory to study singing.
In the summer of 1984 Arja was a Lions Club scholarship student in Wilmar near Minneapolis in the USA. She returned after three years for a summer with the same family. She says 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)
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