Reviews of Merja Soria: “Her vocals are so haunting, her folksongs scholarship impeccable…Soria doesn’t need to clutter songs with much instrumentation, her voice carries the day all on its own.”- Sing Out! “I first heard the music on the National Geographic special on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It is absolutely beautiful. The music is performed with Merja’s heavenly “elvish” voice accompanied only with the Finnish lute. If you ever wanted to hear Galadriel or Arwen singing, this is the soundtrack to get!”- Yau-ming, review at Amazon.com “Soria plays these traditional songs with wistful pleasure and a freshness, not so much in a strict traditional manner as in a creative style…” – Dirty Linen “Certainly, she has stripped away the rackety style into which many modern players of this kind of music have fallen, and she has produced a shining example of Finnish roots music. The quieter songs are absolute gems…Merja’s shimmering kantele strings make Simon and Garfunkel seem overproduced.”- New World Finn Ms. Soria’s CD Arctic Silence is a selection of ancient Finnish songs. A song from Arctic Silence was featured in the National Geographic Television’s program “Beyond the Movie: Lord of The Rings”. Ms. Soria is dedicated to performing the touching music of Finnish heritage. She combines kanteles (Finnish folk harp) and voice to sing the haunting songs of Suomi. Finnish folk poetry tells that when the first kantele was played for the first time, the sound was so beautiful that everybody started to cry. When the tears touched the water of the ocean, they turned to pearls.