Tarja Turunen & Mike Terrana - Beauty & The Beat (2014)

Tarja’s latest release is not a typical Tarja album. In fact it isn’t a typical rock album at all. Where Tarja’s latest album, “Colours in the Dark” is a rock album with some classical elements, “Beauty and the beat” is more of a Classical music album with some rock thrown in for good measure. Beauty and the Beat was originally intended to be a single live concert but proved so successful that several more dates have followed. It involves Tarja on vocals, Mike Terrana on drums, a choir and an orchestra. They perform a selection of pieces of classical music from composers including Mozart, Puccini, Dvorak and Bach, as well as rock songs from Tarja’s albums and artists such as Queen and Led Zeppelin.
As you’d expect, Tarja’s voice sounds amazing here – classical music is where she started out and the music here really suits her vocal style perfectly allowing her to showcase the quality of her vocals. The music too is excellent – the orchestra and choir doing their parts perfectly, and the music selected does include some well known pieces so even if you arent a classical music fan you will certainly recognise some of the pieces – the William Tell overture for instance, which is performed here as an instrumental with the orchestra accompanied by Mike Terrana on drums. In fact you might be surprised how many of the pieces you do recognise.

I suspect that the first CD isn’t going to be as popular with fans as the 2nd. The first is all classical while the second disc is the more familiar rock stuff with a mix of covers and her own solo material. Personally I really enjoy listening to some of the classical pieces she’s done on this album, but think it might have been slightly better had there been more of a mix so both discs contained some classical and some rock – as things are then some fans are likely to find the Classical section a bit much.

Tarja fans who are hoping for this to be another of her regular solo albums are going to be disappointed as are fans who don’t like classical music. Fans who enjoy some classical music though are going to find this a great release. The classical pieces are well chosen and sound great and Tarja’s vocals really sound superb.