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Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Lights, metal, music |
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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Thursday, 07 December 2006 |
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 If thoughts of Santa with his sleigh racing around the world in one night get your heart racing, stand back when the Trans-Siberian Orchestra rolls through.
It’s an extravaganza of lights, lasers and pyrotechnics where fist-pumping rock ’n’ roll collides with an orchestral string  section head on. TSO crushes the notion of silent night.
“It’s not a heavy metal concert,” TSO co-founder Al Pitrelli clarified during a recent phone call from Fresno, Calif. “There are elements of that in it, but it is a non-genre specific musical event. There’s choral music, symphonic, blues, jazz, classical. It’s basically nailing everything we all grew up with and rolling it into this one behemoth called the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.”
That behemoth is loaded with crunchy guitars and lightning fills, tinkling keyboards and a propulsive string section that drives the sleigh, but don’t mute the bells. A vocal choir adds plenty of heavenly lift, though the male lead singer’s powerful shouts and billowing vocals add a sense of forceful determination that classic holiday songs shouldn’t be limited to frosty porches or firesides.
“The thing about TSO is the believability factor,” Pitrelli said. “If we didn’t do something that seemed natural it would reek to high heaven. The brilliance of Paul (O’Neill, TSO co-founder) is to take classical and traditional themes and infuse them with countless riffs and musical ideas, by putting a very clever twist on things familiar and then putting our own stamp on it. The familiarity lets people recognize things, but then there are some original themes written around that one familiar piece.”
Trans-Siberian Orchestra formed 10 years ago when Pitrelli was invited to play guitar on an album by Savatage, which featured O’Neill. When Pitrelli heard O’Neill’s initial composition of what is now TSO’s signature hit, “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24),” it was like he was offered an early Christmas present.
“As soon as I heard it I thought, ‘I get exactly what you mean.’ The power of that story, I immediately got it,” Pitrelli recalled. “Then Paul suggested we write a record around this track. Without even thinking I said, ‘count me in.’ … Everyone thought we were out of our minds.”
Quite possibly. In 1996, grunge was in full swing and boy bands and pop divas still topped the charts. The idea of merging holiday songs with orchestra and hard rock was pretty far-fetched. But clearly, the concept has worked well enough that TSO operates as two bands touring the country at once to keep up with the demand.
“For a heavy metal slash symphonic record to do anything, it was a one in a million shot,” Pitrelli said. “(But) we knew that if we were given the opportunity to do what we wanted to do, we wouldn’t let it slip though our hands.”
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TO GO TO THE SHOW
• Trans-Siberian Orchestra
• Doors 6 p.m.; show 7:30 p.m.
• Tuesday, Dec. 12
• Pepsi Center, Denver
• $40, $48.50, $55
• 303.830.8497, www.ticketmaster.com | Only registered users can write comments.
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