Metal
Singer Amanda Somerville has a malignant, aggressive brain tumour. Her husband, guitarist Sander Gommans, co-founder and principal songwriter of After Forever, made it public on Saturday 19 September in a message on social media.
“The love of my life, the mother of my three daughters and my beautiful wife, Amanda Somerville, has a malignant and aggressive brain tumour,” Gommans writes. “We are in shock, devastated, and I can’t describe what we’re facing as a family right now. Positive thoughts help, prayers help, keeping us in mind helps.”
Somerville is American, from Michigan, and has lived and worked in Germany and the Netherlands since 1999. She sang on Kamelot’s “Ghost Opera” (2007), stood in for Simone Simons on Epica’s 2008 North American tour with Symphony X, and has toured with Avantasia. She runs the projects Trillium and Kiske/Somerville, the latter with Michael Kiske of Helloween, and co-wrote the rock opera “Aina”. Her own solo album, “Windows”, dates from 2008.
She was also one of the four voices in Exit Eden’s original line-up, alongside Clémentine Delauney, Marina La Torraca and Anna Brunner. The project, which hadn’t featured her for years, plays Razzmatazz on 21 November with Kamelot and Temperance.
Gommans has given no details of the treatment or the prognosis.
Text by Roger Estivill