Nightlife / Music

Orchestra lessons : TSO a holiday phenomenon for a new generation

By Wayne Bledsoe | Thursday, December 21, 2006 | () comments

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Bob Kinkel, left, Paul O'Neill and Al Pitrelli are the performers behind Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

John Schultz/GO! The Trans-Siberian Orchestra performed last year at The Mark of the Quad-Cities.

In 1996, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra created the closest thing to a Christmas music phenomenon that the post-baby-boomer generation has ever seen.

“Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24,” a nearly bombastic reworking of “Carol of the Bells” with symphony, synthesizer and heavy-metal guitar, became a hit and has since become a perennial favorite.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra guitarist Al Pitrelli says that one question is common about the group:

“What’s with this Russian rock band with the opera?”

Pitrelli laughs.

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra sprang from a collaboration between rock producer Paul O’Neill and the heavy-metal rock band Savatage in 1995.

While Savatage had won fame with several albums and was featured on MTV’s “Headbanger’s Ball,” it was the track “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” on the group’s album “Dead Winter Dead” that gave the group a new career. Pitrelli, a veteran of Megadeth and Alice Cooper’s band, had been asked to join the group by O’Neill.

“This was during the Nirvana era,” says Pitrelli. “Hair metal was dead and buried.”

However, that was only in the United States.

“In November we went to Europe,” says Pitrelli. “When we came back (to the U.S., the track), was the No. 1-requested number in the nation — in nearly all formats.”

The president of Atlantic Records suggested that an entire album be built around the single.

“We all got together and just put all the ideas on the table,” says Pitrelli.

While he loved what resulted, Pitrelli admits he was skeptical that any one would buy the resulting album, which became the first release under the name Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

“But we wrote a record that the American public immediately got,” says Pitrelli.”

The band released a follow-up, “The Christmas Attic,” in 1998, and a year later the group decided to take the show on the road during the Christmas season.

Pitrelli says the group wasn’t prepared for what it saw in the crowd the first night that the curtain opened.

“There were kids with Megadeth T-shirts on beside Grandma with knitted Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sweaters,” says Pitrelli. “All ages. Everybody got it.”

The show has since developed into one of the most elaborate and successful music presentations on the road.

There are two different companies (one led by Pitrelli and the other led by keyboardist Bob Kinkel), and each of the concerts includes 24 musicians, pyrotechnics and what Pitrelli calls “the biggest light show on the planet.”

With two more successful albums under the group’s belt (“Beethoven’s Last Night” and “The Lost Christmas Eve”) and crowds that seem to nearly double each season, Pitrelli sees the Trans-Siberian Orchestra tour becoming a Christmas tradition.

“The only challenge is to not pay attention to the geometric growth of the shows,” he says. “I just keep telling everybody, ‘This is just a rock show.’”

if you go

What: Trans-Siberian Orchestra

When: 3 and 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 29

Where: The Mark of the Quad-Cities, Moline

How much: $39 and $29

Information: (309) 764-2000