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Have yourself an edgy little Christmas
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's sold-out concerts offer carols that blend rock and symphonic sensibilities.
By PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 21, 2000
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the metal-meets-symphony outfit masterminded by Savatage composer and producer Paul O'Neill, has turned its versions of Christmas favorites into big success.
How big?
Two touring companies are on the road for the 30-city holiday tour of a production titled Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Eve and Other Stories. Each is 24 members strong, with eight orchestral players, six lead singers and assorted vocalists and instrumentalists. Savatage singer-keyboardist Jon Oliva, bassist Johnny Lee Middleton and O'Neill (on guitar) will play Friday at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. Like many TSO stops, it is sold out.
The holiday theme, clearly, has resonated with listeners.
"It gives us an anchor," O'Neill says. "No matter what kind of music you're into, between the ages of 6 and 12 you all grow up with the same timeless Christmas melodies. It's like coming home. Since we're mixing a symphony with a rock band, it sounds fresh. But it's familiar at the same time. I wanted to tap into the magic of Christmas."
It all started with TSO's first two CDs, 1996's gold-selling Christmas Eve and Other Storiesand 1998's The Christmas Attic.
The discs, with Oliva and other members of the Tampa Bay area-bred band, featured song cycles that yielded more opportunities for exposure. Subsequent concert tours were sold out. Last year, Jewel, Michael Crawford and actor Ossie Davis joined the group for TSO: The Ghosts of Christmas Eve, a prime-time special on the Fox Family Channel.
TSO recently contributed tracks to the compilation Another Rosie Christmas and the How the Grinch Stole Christmas soundtrack album.
The planned third installment of the yuletide trilogy will have to wait: O'Neill, perhaps taking a cue from old-school pomp rockers Emerson, Lake and Palmer, plugged directly into classical music for Beethoven's Last Night, released in April.
The new CD, a rock opera built around a fanciful exchange between the titular composer and Satan, offers variations on themes by Beethoven, Mozart and Rimsky-Korsakov, as performed by a chamber string orchestra, adult and children's choirs and members of Savatage.
"You need larger-than-life subjects, and I've always admired Beethoven," O'Neill says. "He was deaf the last 30 years of his life, but he was able to create all this great music. He was a tortured soul, creating all this music that he would never hear. I read that the night he died (in 1827), there was the largest lightning storm in European history. That was such a powerful visual that it inspired us to write this story. At midnight, Mephistopheles appears to collect his soul."
O'Neill, a native New Yorker who has produced discs by Aerosmith, promoted overseas tours by Sting, Bon Jovi and Madonna and organized Japanese rock festivals, first hooked up with Savatage in 1990 for the Gutter Ballet disc. He then teamed with Oliva and producer-writer Robert Kinkel for Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24, a track from Savatage's 1995 Dead Winter Dead album.
The three decided to expand on the concept, with larger projects. Christmas Eve and Other Stories included newfangled, symphonic versions of The First Noel, O Come All Ye Faithful, Oh Holy Night and other traditional yuletide songs, along with Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24. A similar strategy was employed for The Christmas Attic, which offered variations on We Three Kingsand Angels We Have Heard on High. More than 100 musicians were involved in the making of each album.
PREVIEW
Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Eve and Other Stories is at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg at 8 p.m. Friday. The concert is sold out.
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