Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Trans-Siberian Orchestra, American rock band known for its symphonic heavy metal renditions of Christmas songs and classical music. Its theatrical concerts during holiday-season tours include laser light shows, pyrotechnics, and other visual effects. Its first album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996), which went triple platinum, contains the popular song “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24,” a metal and orchestral mash-up of the Christmas classics “Carol of the Bells” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” As a 2008 review in the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) by writer Steve Spears described the band and its concerts: “Take a light show worthy of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, mix in the drama of a Broadway production and score it to the thrashing guitars of an AC/DC head-banging fest. Then wrap it all up in a big Christmas bow.”

Origins

Trans-Siberian Orchestra was the brainchild of rock music producer Paul O’Neill (1956–2017). In 1987 O’Neill, who had been working for Atlantic Records, began collaborating with brothers Jon Oliva and Criss Oliva, who fronted the progressive metal band Savatage, based in Tarpon Springs, Florida, near Tampa. O’Neill brought Savatage a vision for producing rock operas, and he produced and collaborated on writing some of the band’s more successful albums that combined heavy metal and progressive rock with piano and classical elements. Their collaboration began with 1987’s Hall of the Mountain King, which includes metal mixed with classical bits of Gustav Holst’s The Planets (1918) and Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt (1876). O’Neill continued working with Savatage on metal concept albums, such as Gutter Ballet (1989), Streets (A Rock Opera) (1991), Edge of Thorns (1993), and Dead Winter Dead (1995). Dead Winter Dead includes the song “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24,” which would go on to become Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s most prominent hit.

In the 1990s O’Neill began to envision a rock band that would combine symphonic and rock elements, intensive stage pageantry, and Christmas music. As he is quoted on the band’s website: “I was building on the work of everybody I worshipped: the rock opera parts from bands like The Who; the marriage of classical and rock from bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Queen; the over-the-top light show from bands like Pink Floyd.” Atlantic Records gave him the green light to begin exploring that project, and he saw in Savatage’s lineup the possibility of bringing his vision to life.

“Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” took off in 1995 when Tampa disc jockey Mason Dixon was given a copy of Savatage’s Dead Winter Dead and played the Christmas track on radio station Mix 96. People phoned in large numbers to request it the next day. He called a friend at a radio station in New York City, who started spinning it there, and the song spread, becoming one of the most-requested tracks of the holiday season. Once O’Neill and Savatage realized that a new direction of orchestral metal Christmas music was possible, they created a new branch of the band and branded it as Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Many of the musicians involved with Savatage have continued to be part of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, including Jon Oliva, guitarists Chris Caffery and Al Pitrelli (who have tried to fill the void in Savatage left by Criss Oliva after his death in a car crash on his way to a music festival in 1993), drummer Jeff Plate, bassist Johnny Lee Middleton, and vocalist Zachary Stevens, along with the many other musicians who tour with the band. The music of Trans-Siberian Orchestra has been composed in collaboration among O’Neill, Jon Oliva, Pitrelli, and Robert Kinkel.

Music and albums

“Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24,” Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s major hit, was, as of 2016, in third place among most downloaded Christmas songs, per Billboard magazine, with more than 1.3 million downloads. After appearing first on Savatage’s Dead Winter Dead album it was featured on Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996), which became one of the top 10 Christmas albums through the next 25 years. The song’s meaning in the context of Dead Winter Dead concerns the horrors of the Bosnian War (1992–95). The album, with a mix of metal and symphonic pieces, interweaves the stories of a young soldier, a young Muslim woman, and an older cellist in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In one scene, as described in the liner notes, the cellist plays as the war rages on Christmas Eve, and the soldier and woman hear “the sounds of Christmas carols from the old cello player mingling with the sounds of war.” The song opens with a calm and quiet orchestral version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” before launching into a rocking rendition of “Carol of the Bells”—the English name of the Ukrainian song “Shchedryk” (“Little Swallow”). In an interview with Christianity Today in 2003, O’Neill explained that he had heard about an accomplished cellist who had returned to Sarajevo during the war and played classical and Christmas music at night during the Serbian army’s bombings of the city. The song’s appearance on Christmas Eve and Other Stories puts the song in the context of a story about an angel sent by God from heaven to find good in the world. The angel, according to the story on the band’s website, collected songs that “best represented Christmas” and “seemed to give voice to man’s greatest joys as well as hope to those deepest in despair.” “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as of 2009 (500,000 units sold) and hit 1.3 million downloads by 2016.

Other popular singles by Trans-Siberian Orchestra include “Christmas Canon,” which combines a symphonic rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon with a children’s choir singing about Christmas. (The song is devoid of any apparent rock influence.) The song “Wizards in Winter” marries metal and classical music and has appeared in a viral video of a synchronized music and holiday light show and as part of an advertisement for Tesla’s Model X. The song “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” turns Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker into a metal rocker with strings and piano.

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While best known for its Christmas material, Trans-Siberian Orchestra has also followed in the footsteps of Emerson, Lake & Palmer by exploring rock renditions of classical music, albeit with a more heavy metal flair. Albums such as Beethoven’s Last Night (2000), Night Castle (2009), and Letters from the Labyrinth (2015) all mix originals and classical pieces. For example in the song “Requiem (The Fifth)” from Beethoven’s Last Night, Trans-Siberian Orchestra offers an orchestral and heavy metal take on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony along with Mozart’s Requiem Mass.

Of TSO’s albums, four have achieved platinum (one million units sold) status with the RIAA. Christmas Eve and Other Stories reached triple platinum status. It was 1996’s number one Christian album, per Billboard, for 11 weeks. The Christmas Attic (1998) and The Lost Christmas Eve (2004) both attained double platinum. Night Castle (2009) also went platinum, debuting and peaking at number two on the Billboard rock charts. Letters from the Labyrinth (2015) peaked at number one for two weeks as the top rock album in December 2015. The classical-based Beethoven’s Last Night reached gold status. A TV movie, The Ghosts of Christmas Eve (1999), later released on DVD, also went platinum and became popular Christmas-season television programming fare. The albums are concept albums complete with stories written by O’Neill that are narrated during the group’s concerts.

Concerts and touring

Initially Trans-Siberian Orchestra only released albums. In 1999 it launched a stage show that became one of the hot tickets of the Christmas season and included intense sonic and visual media along with pyrotechnics. According to a review in The Washington Post of a 2008 show: “This was a Christmas pageant cranked up to 11—complete with explosions, airborne platforms, screeching guitar solos and a light show so blindingly luminescent that it could seemingly cause brownouts along the Eastern Seaboard.” Indeed, a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert in 2005 blew out the generators at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey, and another in 2007 took out part of the main city power grid of Jackson, Mississippi.

Beginning in 2000, following the success of its first tour in 1999, the band split into two teams for the east and west parts of the United States to cover more ground in the shortened holiday season tour schedule. Aside from Savatage holdovers, new musicians on keyboards, strings, vocals, and other instruments were included every year. The TSO website, as of 2024, lists 39 musicians past and present, including O’Neill who died in 2017. The size of the production and tour is massive. For example, in the 2019 tour it covered 66 cities in seven weeks for 109 shows, moving 250 crew and musicians on 40 trucks and 20 buses. Each team included 18 musicians joined by local string musicians. The tour also spent $1 million on pyrotechnic effects. The 2016 tour used 20 snow machines and 34 industrial fans to make it “snow” in theaters. The 2022 tour added a Tesla coil.

As of July 2022 per live-concert tracker Pollstar, the band had grossed nearly $770 million and sold more than 15 million tickets during its career, putting the band, at the time, at the 11th most tickets sold (one spot behind Grateful Dead) and 21st highest earners (one spot above P!nk ) among live musicians since 1980.

TSO has also contributed significantly to charity, adding up to almost $20 million donated to various local charities around the country as of 2024. The charities it has given to include Toys for Tots, the Salvation Army, the Mason Dixon Christmas Wish Fund in Tampa, the St. Augustine Hunger Center in Cleveland, and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. The band has also contributed to Little Kids Rock (now Music Will), a nonprofit that gives instruments and music lessons to underfunded school districts.