P
rog-rock staltwarts, Trans-Siberian Orchestra
(TSO) make their on-stage debut of the 1998
made-for-TV movie, The Ghosts of Christmas
Eve, later this month at Allstate Arena . The 160minute show is an aural and visual experience,
complete with a plethora of pyrotechnics and massive synchronized light displays.
Guitarist and musical director, Al Pitrelli, told IE
that all the potential technical glitches on the tour
will be worked out during their month-long, fullproduction rehearsals. "We’re basically doing 30
shows in rehearsal before we do one show with an
audience,” Pitrelli said. "So anything that could go
wrong will go wrong during rehearsals. By the time
we play opening night, we've done the show 30 to
31 times.”
The TSO traveling holiday rock opera is a multimillion-dollar act that has grown exponentially
since the band's inception in 1996. TSO is one of the
highest-grossing concert bands in the U.S. and its
2014 Winter Tour grossed more than $51 million. In
true TSO fashion, $1 of each concert ticket sold goes
to local and national charities. To date, the band has
donated a total of $12 million to charity.
TSO became the powerhouse act that it is today
out of the progressive/metal Savatage track,
"Christmas Eve (Sarajevo)," which appeared on
1995's Dead Winter Dead album. The orchestral piece
ignited the idea that led producer/composer/writer
Paul O'Neill, Jon Oliva and Pitrelli (both of
Savatage) and keyboardist/producer Robert
Kinkel, to form the creative core of TSO. No one at
the time was able to predict how much success the
band would have, but Pitrelli felt something magical was about to happen with that single. "The first
year it hit radio, it became the No.1 requested song
in America in the winter of 1995, that's when we
realized we were onto something unique," Pitrelli
said. "But even going back before that when I
played the first opening notes to that track when we
were recording it, I knew there was something deep
and powerful here. That was the song that got
everybody's attention, and it's been non-stop ever
since."
TSO's new album, Letters from the Labyrinth, continues the path taken on pretty much every TSO
album to date. It's decorated with grand orchestrations, a heartfelt storyline and passionate performances. The inspiration for the album came out of
O'Neill's love of history. "The story takes over where
the last album, Night Castle, left off," Pitrelli said. "It's
a continuation of Paul's tales. The collection of the
songs are some of the hardest stuff that I've ever had
to record. We did a bunch of the songs at a festival
over in Europe this past summer (Wacken Open
Air), so we're already playing about three or four
songs from the new record, and I'm excited to introduce these new songs to folks."
The Wacken show was the first time in history
that two bands played simultaneously on two separate stages. A reunited Savatage on one stage and
TSO on the adjoining stage. Eventually both bands
played together on both stages - separated by a catwalk. It proved to be an amazing performance, yet
Pitrelli and everyone involved in both bands had
some consternation, magnified by performing in
front of 80,000 people. "It was pretty incredible to
put that band (Savatage) back together," he said.
"We haven't played together in probably 16-17
years. It was an opportunity to present Savatage in
a way that it deserves to be presented, and to introduce Trans-Siberian Orchestra to a lot of folks in
Germany. It was a horrifying and terrifying
moment in my life because there was so much that
could have gone wrong, logistically and technically.
But it went off without a hitch. Everybody wanted
it to be amazing and it was."
The Ghosts Of Christmas Eve gained TSO recog-
20 illinoisentertainer.com december 2015
generations of fans from different ages and musical
tastes. "The music is so diverse that it only makes
sense that so is the audience," Pitrelli said. "Younger
people are into the more aggressive and heavier
stuff and that's awesome, but there's so much musicality to the band that it has attracted a lot of people.
I look out in the audience and see three or four generations of family members sitting together and it's
just one of the nicest things in the world. That's the
hidden treasure in my job, I'm watching families
spend time together and enjoy themselves."
TSO's momentum hasn't wavered in the least
since its formation, and the mega-act hasn't showing any signs of slowing down. The band, under
O'Neill's guidance, is always looking for ways to
one-up itself every year. "It's not too far-fetched to
compare (the band) to the New England Patriots or
any other football team that's won several Super
Bowls, or a baseball team winning the World
Series," Pitrelli concluded. "You look back on the
previous year and wonder about the next year, the
next game, the next concert. Our job is to keep getting better."
nition worldwide, and since they had never done a
proper tour for it, it only seemed fitting to tour on it
now. "It was like a greatest hits of the first two
records, Christmas Eve and Other Stories and The
Christmas Attic, Pitrelli said. "We took songs from
each record and Paul came in with a script that was
beautifully narrated by Ozzie Davis. It was a tale of
a teenage runaway who is lost and seeks refuge in
an old movie theatre. The shadows on the walls and
the ghosts of the theater come alive to help her find
her way home on that Christmas Eve. That's the fun
thing about Paul's stories, as you get older you don't
grow out of the story, you grow up to be the next
character in the story. All these songs take on different meanings as the listener gets older and it's a
really interesting thing to be a part of."
The demographics of a TSO audience spans Appearing 12 ̎][