[ concert preview ]
DECK THE HALLS
PHOTO BY BOB CAREY
Unlikely Christmas hitmakers Trans-Siberian Orchestra return to Orlando with their signature holiday show BY ALAN SCULLEY
L
ast year, Trans-Siberian Orchestra was forced to cancel in ’96. The people fell in love with the characters. They fell their signature annual project — the holiday tour of in love with the story. They fell in love with the sentiment of North American arenas that typically draws more than it. Because at the end of the day, the center of Paul’s story is about missing somebody, and everybody misses somebody, a million fans. To help fill the void, TSO put together a livestream concert. especially around the holidays. “I think during the livestream, it showed me, in particular, Scaling the show down from an arena where TSO deploys a spectacular light show and all manner of pyrotechnics two things,” Pitrelli concluded. “One is that people, they love and special effects to something that works on a TV or the story. It didn’t have all the special effects. There’s no physcomputer screen was a challenge, but ical way we could do that. But the band the livestream, which featured the 1996 played amazing. The singers brought Christmas Eve and Other Stories album, the characters to life. I heard after the TRANS-SIBERIAN went over well, an unexpected early fact that we sold almost 250,000 of those ORCHESTRA Christmas gift for fans. things. From a financial standpoint, I 3 p.m. & 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18 And in a way, the livestream took TSO could care less. It didn’t matter to me. Amway, Center, 400 W Church St. back to its beginnings, before founder/ What really made me emotional is that amwaycenter.com songwriter, the late Paul O’Neill, was people wanted their tradition. Albeit $25-$96 financially able to create the visual convirtually, we were all joined together.” Pitrelli and Plate are taking the two cert extravaganza fans know and love. touring ensembles of TSO back to areThe livestream also revealed an important truth to Al Pitrelli and Jeff Plate, the musical directors of nas across the country starting this very week. Knowing TSO’s two touring ensembles. fans will turn out en masse for the shows continues to make “If you go back to our first show in 1999, Jeff and I … I think Pitrelli and Plate surprised and thankful. After all, when we had, I don’t know, seven or eight cities on the tour,” Pitrelli O’Neill founded the project, he envisioned something new said in a teleconference interview shortly before rehearsals and unproven in contemporary music. for their tour began. For one thing, TSO combined a rock band with an orches“We had a box truck, two buses and a fog machine. The tra playing concept albums with cohesive storylines. Instead curtain came up, the lights went down, and we played the of building an image around a singer, guitarist or conductor, songs from top to bottom. It wasn’t the sensory overload that the ensemble used multiple singers and a range of instruit grew up to be. It was a beautifully written story that Paul mentalists who would remain largely anonymous to listeners. O’Neill put pen to paper back in ’95, and we started recording How to market the group was a big question. The albums
would require big budgets, and to be financially viable, the tours would need to play arenas from the start — something few music acts had pulled off. Nevertheless, Atlantic Records got on board with O’Neill’s vision and signed TSO. The label’s faith has been rewarded as the trilogy of Christmas albums became hits that continue to rack up big sales every holiday season. The first release was Christmas Eve and Other Stories. Spurred by the hit single “Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24,” it has sold three million copies. The other two holiday rock operas that make up TSO’s Christmas trilogy — The Christmas Attic (1998) and The Lost Christmas Eve (2004) — have both topped 2 million copies sold. In addition, the group has released a Christmas EP, 2012’s Dreams of Fireflies (on a Christmas Night), and three full-length non-holiday albums — Beethoven’s Last Night (2000), Night Castle (2009) and Letters From the Labyrinth (2015). In all, the group’s CDs and DVDs have sold more than 12 million copies and the Christmas tour plays to nearly a million fans each year. This year, as in 2019, TSO’s show will feature the Christmas Eve and Other Stories album as a first set, followed by a selection of other material in the second set. That 1996 debut album was played for a dozen years when TSO started touring, then was set aside to feature the other albums in the Christmas trilogy on subsequent tours. Bringing back the album that began the TSO journey has been special for Pitrelli and Plate. “Yes, this is my favorite show,” said Plate, who joined Pitrelli for the teleconference. “I’ve said all along, I think this story is really the star of the show. This is what kept bringing people back every year … when people connected with the story and realized it’s about them. It’s about everybody. This is just how people, just word of mouth, kept coming back. These audiences kept building every year. This [was] our first venture with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Christmas Eve and Other Stories, so this has a lot of meaning. It’s very special for all of us. The songs, the story, [everything] about it, I think is fantastic.”
orlandoweekly.com
music@orlandoweekly.com ●
NOV. 17-23, 2021 ● ORLANDO WEEKLY
63
