It was on Sunday, August 31st, that the Finnish singer Tarja Turunen ended her Brazilian tour at Canecão, Rio de Janeiro, after playing in São Paulo, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Fortaleza and Belo Horizonte. The beginning of the event was really punctual starting at 8:30 pm with the Brazilian band Hydria warming up the audience. I believe they did a great job since the audience really applauded and screamed after the concert. When I arrived there they were playing the last song so I cannot say much.
A big surprise for me, though, was to see Canecão full. I wasn´t expecting so many people. The place wasn´t crowded but I believe at least one thousand people were there to see Tarja.
Believe me, when talking about Rio de Janeiro this is a huge number when the event is not big.
The concert started around 9:30pm impeccably. A white curtain made of soft fabric was raised in front of the stage and until the middle of the first song all we could see were shadows on stage.
Tarja opened her set with the song BOY AND THE GHOST, followed by LOST NORTHERN STAR and MY LITTLE PHOENIX, all of them from her first solo album WINTER STORM. Very kind, the singer tried to communicate with the audience in Portuguese during practically the entire concert and I have to say that her pronunciation was really good in some very difficult sentences.
The band that played with Tarja had an excellent line up: Mike Terrana [Rage, Masterplan, Malmsteen], on the drums, Doug Wimbish [Living Colour], bass, Maria Ilmoniemi, keyboards, the great Max Silja [ex-Apocalyptica], playing the cello, besides Kiko Loureiro [Angra], the Brazilian guitarist to whom the audience screamed almost as much as for Tarja.
The band was really fine on stage and did an excellent job. Well, with musicians like those, it couldn´t have been different, right? Even Tarja changed her posture. She is much more communicative, moving on stage and interacting much more with the audience than when she used to sing in Nightwish.
Her solo work follows the same line as the Finnish band with less keyboards and more guitar. We could say that it´s more direct, although the line is the same and the vocals hardly ever vary, what makes it sound a bit repetitive after the third song, as her voice sounds the same in most of them. I apologize to the fans but I think this “round opera style” with no variation sounds really really boring.
To the fans of her Nightwish years she sang Passion & the Opera, Nemo, Wishmaster and Over the Hills and Far Away [bis]. Tarja wore four different clothes, all of them very beautiful, and had her solo moment playing the piano and singing during the song Oasis. Two other moments that made the audience applaud a lot were Kiko Loureiro´s beautiful acoustic guitar solo during the song Our Great Divide and Calling Grace, one of the last songs of the concert, played only with acoustic guitar, cello and voice.
They didn´t play the only song I really wanted to see alive, Fantasma de la Opera, and as I could see, it was replaced by a huge mistake: a version for Megadeath´s Symphony of Destruction that honestly, sounded funny on her voice. The second mistake was another version, this time for the song Poison by Alice Cooper.
The audience seemed to be enjoying that but I can´t believe how those who know the original version and are able to understand the lyrics could possibly like this interpretation that has completely destroyed the song´s atmosphere. Sorry, but I really hated it.
I would say that although she sings very well and showed kindness to all fans, she wouldn´t have done a good concert if her musicians were a bit less competent. Besides the excellent band that performed with Tarja Turunen I have also to congratulate the sound engineer Marcelo Ariente, from São Paulo and the light designer Rodrigo Zanlorenzi, from Curitiba, for the great work they did. Many people from the audience talked about the high quality of the sound and the light and thought they were foreigners. But no! They were two Brazilian guys doing an excellent job with perfect lights and a very clean and well equalized voice that for a concert like this, mixing the heavy instruments with the opera voice style, it is crucial or not even the biggest fan would be able to stand it.
I would say that Tarja did a good concert together with her band, there weren´t failures that could be noticed and this is very important. But there is still something missing there. It wasn´t an outstanding performance but it was good to be there.
SET LIST:
BOY AND THE GHOST
LOST NORTHERN STAR
MY LITTLE PHOENIX
PASSION & THE OPERA
SING FOR ME
NEMO
I WALK ALONE
CIARAN´S WELL
OUR GREAT DIVIDE
SYMPHONY OF DESTRUCTION
ENOUGH
OASIS
POISON
WISHMASTER
DIE ALIVE
CALLING GRACE
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY
