Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Bombastic classic
Trans-Siberian Orchestra is best known for bombastic, theatrical interpretations of Christmas music. How can they expect an audience to show up for a concert happening not only after Christmas, but after New Year's Day, too?
The orchestral rock powerhouse performs two shows at Rosemont's Allstate Arena on Saturday, Jan. 3, but co-founder, keyboardist and musical director Bob Kinkel isn't worried about local fans suffering holiday music burnout.
"We were really surprised when we talked to people after the show," says Kinkel, who has seen the group's tours extend past Christmas for several years. "So many people thought it was great. It extended the holiday season for them, and they could really just sit back and enjoy the show. They didn't have to worry about cooking dinner, getting ready for family, buying gifts, doing all that stuff that can stress people out around the holidays."
It's not like the audience disappears on Dec. 26. In 2007, TSO's three holiday-themed albums - 1996's "Christmas Eve and Other Stories," 1998's "The Christmas Attic" and 2004's "The Lost Christmas Eve" - all placed in the top 10 of Billboard's Catalog Album Charts, selling more than 900,000 copies combined, and the group's annual winter jaunt was the year's second-most-attended tour.
Founded by producer, composer and lyricist Paul O'Neill, TSO debuted in 1996, at a time when exaggerated bombast in the symphonic, prog rock and heavy metal tradition was definitely uncool. O'Neill had a track record in production, artist management and concert promotion, having worked with names such as Aerosmith, Sting and Def Leppard.
O'Neill had also been working with Florida's Savatage, who under his tutelage developed from a scrappy American metal band into a progressive creature given to compassionate concept albums, piano balladry and Broadway-sized emoting.
"I met Paul working with Savatage back in 1986," recalls Kinkel, a Buffalo, N.Y., native who says his parents are both musical, while Kinkel himself took piano lessons as a child, sang in his church's choir and played saxophone in a school jazz band. "He was doing this song that had (Grieg's) 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' in it, and he needed someone who could do the orchestra part to the rock band."
The song, an instrumental called "Prelude to Madness," became a fan favorite, O'Neill became the band's full-time collaborator and Kinkel played piano on all the band's albums until they went on hiatus in 2002. In fact, Trans-Siberian Orchestra's first hit, "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)," is actually a Savatage song. Originally appearing on the band's 1995 Bosnian War-themed album "Dead Winter Dead," the unexpected success of this vocal-free blend of "Carol of the Bells" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" led to the formation of the project, which had been gestating in O'Neill's mind.
"Paul and I had written 'Christmas Eve,'" Kinkel says, "and with the label's urging and Paul's idea, we decided that it was possible to do a whole Christmas rock opera."
Kinkel says, "If it wasn't for Savatage, none of us would have met or worked together." In tribute to TSO's roots, the keyboardist says the group's current tour includes a few Savatage songs, while the touring band contains Savatage alumni including drummer Jeff Plate, bassist Johnny Lee Middleton and guitarists Chris Caffery, Al Pitrelli and Alex Skolnick (also of Testament).
Along with the heavy bottom end, TSO features an array of male and female vocalists for whom Kinkel offers effusive praise. "We have people from the theater world," he notes. "We have people who have only done rock their whole lives, some people are just classical. The mixture is always there with TSO. Some of our songs go from real hard rock tunes to operatic things. 'Queen of the Winter Night,' which Danielle Landherr is singing this year, is based on Mozart's 'The Magic Flute.' She's got kind of an opera style and she can rock it out. She does an amazing job with that."
Storytelling is another key TSO component, as all of the group's albums have been linked by O'Neill's inspirational librettos. Kinkel says that the stories and the songs that make them up "evolve together. In general, Paul writes the stories and lyrics and comes up with the concepts we're working on. Sometimes a song will be born and we'll have to modify the story to fit the song in, and sometimes the story is in need of a song."
Kinkel doesn't believe that TSO's association with Christmas pigeonholes it as a once-a-year attraction, citing the inclusion of music from their nonseasonal 2000 album "Beethoven's Last Night" at sporting events and on television. Their next album, "Nightcastle," which has been in the works for several years, also has nothing to do with winter, and Kinkel says it will allow the group to tour in other seasons.
"We're keeping the story very close," laughs Kinkel, "so I can't tell you about that. It's our most ambitious album to date, and it's probably going to be the longest we've had. We've been releasing little bits of it as we go. We just made the opening song from the CD, 'Night Enchanted,' available on Amazon, and we're playing that live as well."
Kinkel gushes about his audiences' enthusiasm ("If you can't really hear what you're playing occasionally, you know you're doing something right"), and observes that "since the very first show, we've had a very broad audience in age, social background and the type of music they like.
"It's really common to see three generations coming together and all singing along, knowing the songs. It's become a Christmas tradition for so many people, and it's mostly grown due to word-of-mouth. We do a signing line after all the evening shows, for anyone who wants to come up and say 'hi' and get an autograph, and so many people keep track of how many shows they've seen."
Kinkel says that in these uncertain times, Trans-Siberian Orchestra offers more than a concert spectacle. The first half of the show contains the entire "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" album, which he describes as "a story about hope, family and reconciliation. The message of that helps. We have fifteen semis with all the lights, sound equipment, pyrotechnics, lasers, so production-wise, it's the biggest rock show out there. It's two-and-a-half hours where you can escape the world and have every sense in your body taken up by the show. We also go out of our way to make it affordable so people can bring their families.
"It's really about getting music out to people. That's what makes us feel good."
Next shows
Facts: 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 3, at Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Road, Schaumburg, (312) 559-1212 or ticketmaster.com
Tickets: $38-$48