Trans-Siberian Orchestra back in the holiday spirit

By Dave Gil de Rubio Special to Times Leader The Trans-Siberian Orchestra performs.

The Details

If you were to ask what is the United States’ all-time biggest holiday touring act, you might be surprised to learn it’s the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO).

Founded by the late composer/lyricist/record producer/guitarist Paul O’Neill in 1995, TSO’s theatrical spectacle, storytelling, and blend of musical genres and tradition in concert has become a multigenerational annual tradition even as co-founders Al Pitrelli, Jon Oliva, and Robert Kinkel carried on O’Neill’s legacy long after he passed away in 2017 from numerous chronic illnesses.

For Pitrelli, whose resume includes stints touring and recording with Taylor Dayne, Celine Dion, Dee Snider, Alice Cooper, and Expose as well as being a member of heavy metal band Savatage, becoming a holiday fixture and carrying on O’Neill’s vision was a no-brainer. Pitrelli likens it to being a parent.

“I compare TSO to one of my children,” Pitrelli explained in a late-October interview. “As an infant, I’m going, ‘Oh, God. What am I doing? How do I do this?’ I’ve got to protect it, feed it, clothe it, make sure it’s safe. That’s kind of what TSO is and was. If TSO is Paul O’Neill’s child, then I’m its weird uncle. It’s gone from infancy to being approximately 31 years old now. It’s grown up to be something that I didn’t even see or could have fathomed. And I’m so proud of it that it went out to the world and people have fallen in love with it on a generational level.

“People who experienced us back in ’95, ’96, or ’97, turned their children onto it and now they’re bringing their grandkids,” Pitrelli added. “It’s very similar to me, where when I recorded this stuff I was 32 or 33 years old and now I recently turned 64. It became something I could never have thought of in a million years, but Paul O’Neill did.”

Often compared to being “a mix of The Who’s ‘Tommy’ and Andrew Lloyd Webber with Pink Floyd’s lights,” TSO has become a juggernaut both in the studio and on the road. The band has accrued the most holiday CD sales in the past 20 years of any artist in North America, with the trilogy of 1996’s “Christmas Eve and Other Stories,” 1998’s “The Christmas Attic,” and 2004’s “The Lost Christmas Eve” — plus 2016’s “The Ghosts of Christmas Eve” — all becoming hit albums. The latter album is the centerpiece of this year’s live show.

To be sure, holiday music is a cornerstone of the TSO canon, and it’s a commitment the two touring companies of TSO take very seriously when they head out on the road each November with a production that has an incredibly complex variety of moving parts including lasers, hydraulics, videos, moving trusses, and pyro on top of the live presentation of the music. For Pitrelli, a huge movie fan, it’s akin to composing a proper film score.

“TSO has very many genres of music rolled into one, so obviously old-fashioned American rock ’n’ roll, jazz, R&B, traditional Christmas music, works by the great composers, and everything else in between,” the Long Island native said. “There is a Broadway element to it. The singers don’t just sing the songs. It’s very theatrical because you have singers who become characters who present their scenarios and situations to you in context of the story that Paul O’Neill had written. It’s a concept album that always has a happy ending and is very Frank Capra-esque in nature.”

Keeping the music fresh remains a major challenge for TSO. Its audience includes a group of fans Pitrelli lovingly refers to as the repeat offenders, who may have seen the show anywhere from 50 to 100 times. One fan named Patrick Larsen, whom Pitrelli has known since 2001, recently saw his 700th show. That kind of dedication keeps the already hyperpassionate Pitrelli on his toes.

“We’re cautious about constantly, constantly, constantly giving the fans whatever they need to keep their holiday tradition intact,” Pitrelli explained. “I want to change as much of it as humanly possible, now not necessarily musically, but the underscoring with some of the narration. If there’s something that needs a little bit more drama, can we throw a Rachmaninoff movement underneath it? There’s a subliminal part to music that people may not understand why they’re reacting, but my job is to make them react. So what it’s really about is trying to take the audience musically on a journey for the rest of the evening on things we’ve never done before.”

When asked what’s at the heart of TSO’s longevity, Pitrelli cites the kind of intergenerational tradition that is often a cornerstone of the holidays. As someone whose musical gateway drug was “watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan as a 2-year-old in my feety pajamas …” and was later sucked in by the grandiosity and power of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Pitrelli firmly believes that the more things change musically, the more they stay the same.

“It’s funny how history keeps repeating itself,” Pitrelli said. “Music and art from when I was a child 50 years ago is equally important now because we keep doing the same stuff, albeit good stuff or bad stuff. I think why it’s still important is that it still resonates with people because it was written innocently at a time when people needed that innocence or escapism.

And maybe with our grandchildren three decades later, (they’re) walking out the door and realizing how things haven’t really changed that much in the good and the bad. It all comes down to the honesty and sincerity of Paul O’Neill’s vision. There’s nothing contrived about it. It just is what it is and I’m good with that.”

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