Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Rocks the Magic of the Holidays

The holiday season is fast approaching. Amid the bustle of shopping for gifts, baking cookies, trimming the tree and decking the halls, one thing is certain: the holiday spirit is in the air! It is also at the Frank Erwin Center, as we await an enchanting performance by Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO), coming December 22!

The timeless and critically acclaimed Trans-Siberian Orchestra was formed by Paul O’Neill in 1996. A prolific writer and producer, he has had an incredibly varied career in the music industry. He entered the business 20 years ago as a guitarist on “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Throughout the 1980s, he worked for Leber-Krebs Inc., a legendary management company that launched the careers of Aerosmith, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Ted Nugent, The Scorpions, The New York Dolls, and Michael Bolton. O’Neill went on to become one of the biggest rock promoters in Japan, promoting every tour of Madonna and Sting in that decade, as well as some of the biggest rock festivals in Japan.

In 1996, O’Neill approached longtime friends and collaborators Robert Kinkel (composer, co-producer, keyboardist) and Jon Oliva (composer) to form the core writing team of TSO. They envisioned music that was so melodic it didn’t need lyrics, and lyrics that were so poetic they didn’t need music. But once the two elements are put together, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Placing the songs within the context of a story gives it a third dimension that makes an emotional impact possible. Striving to produce greater and greater emotional impact through their music, they began writing not just albums, but rock operas.

Their process is both highly creative and highly technical. First the music is created with no artificial limitations. They then seek out musicians and singers from the classical, rock, Broadway, and R&B realms to bring the songs to life. This causes a cross pollination of musical ideas, creating hybrid forms of music that would never have otherwise occurred.

Not surprisingly, the creators value this compositional freedom. “As a band we like having no limits,” O’Neill says. “I like to think of our albums as large, old castles. They’re magical from a distance or even close up, and the further you delve into them, the more there is to find. It’s magical just to go inside, and it’s magical just looking at the walls and wondering what might be behind them. But if you ever knock down a wall, what’s behind it may – or may not – be the most magical thing of all.”

“Magic” is certainly fitting to describe the music of Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Live, it is breathtaking to behold – entailing a 14-piece orchestra section, a full rock band, a choir, narrators, a stunning light show and extensive pyrotechnics. All of these components combine to form Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s audio, visual and emotional appeal.

This appeal has continued to draw fans since Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s first album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories, released in 1996. They have since released three more albums, including the most recent, The Lost Christmas Eve.

The Lost Christmas Eve is a musical journey of loss and redemption. Its story – set to a diverse soundtrack that fuses elements of rock, classical, pop, folk, Broadway and R&B – encompasses a rundown hotel, an old toy store, a blues bar, a gothic cathedral and their respective inhabitants, whose destinies are intertwined during a single enchanted night in New York City. O’Neill describes it as “a rock album that you can listen to while driving in your car; it has songs that let you mellow out after a rough day at work, and of course it has songs to get into a holiday mood.”

As the holiday mood spreads throughout Austin, let it lead you to the Frank Erwin Center, where Trans-Siberian Orchestra will capture the magic of the holidays on December 22!enter.