Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Where: Verizon Center, 601 F St. NW
When: 4 and 8 p.m. Wednesday
Info: $25 to $59; ticketmaster.com
Where: 1st Mariner Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St., Baltimore
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Info: $25 to $59; ticketmaster.com
Fans of Trans-Siberian Orchestra have been buzzing about the new double-disc album (its first in five years) with 70 pages of liner notes and artwork by renowned science fictions and fantasy illustrator Greg Hildebrandt.
When the group’s show comes to town this week, expect a rock opera of gargantuan proportions built around a holiday theme but featuring some songs from the new, non-holiday discs “Night Castle.”
“It’s a tsunami of sound,” TSO founder and leader Paul O’Neill said. “One critic said it better than I can — it’s ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ meets the Who with Pink Floyd’s light show.”
Many families and individuals attend TSO’s annual shows as faithfully as they attend “A Christmas Carol” and other holiday-themed shows. The stage productions are something of a mix of “Jesus Christ Superstar” — the rock opera in which O’Neill got his start in the music business as a young guitarist — and a red-hot rock concert filled with lasers, a stage charged with hydraulics, multicolored lights and about 60 musicians playing classical and rock-fused arrangements.
O’Neill was the prominent rock concert producer in Japan in 1996 when he teamed with Robert Kinkel and Jon Oliva to form TSO. The trio’s goal was simple, yet also exceedingly complex — blend classical, rock, Broadway, R&B and other musical genres into rock operas that featured a host of the best contemporary singers and musicians.
The extravaganzas have become something of a labor of love for O’Neill who combines his knowledge and love of music — as a composer, player, producer and manager — to create allegories that are fun yet subtly impart historic and moral lessons.
In any two-month period, the band generally sells about two million concert tickets. Credit O’Neill for knowing his audience and how to take classic holiday tunes such as “O Come All Ye Faithful,” combine them with “The Young Nutcracker,” a takeoff on Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite,” and make them enjoyable for the whole family.
O’Neill said he insists prices for tickets and concert memorabilia stay low — about $25 for tickets when many artists charge $50 and more — so families can experience the shows. Perhaps best of all, O’Neill blocks the “nose bleed” seats in the arena from being sold and uses two stages so there truly aren’t bad seats in the house.
“I always wanted music to punch harder and cut deeper. Thanks to Andrew Lloyd Weber (who co-produced” Jesus Christ Superstar” and countless other rock operas) the rock opera gives music a third dimension,” O’Neill said. “Making music has become like making widgets. It’s not supposed to be like that.”
