TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA Guitarist AL PITRELLI -

TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA Guitarist AL PITRELLI - "I Didn't Think It Was Going To Be As Successful, And Here I Am Nearly A Decade Into This Crazy Thing"

Scott Iwasaki at Salt Lake City's Desert Morning News has filed the following report on the TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA:

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas rock concert has gotten bigger every year, and guitarist Al Pitrelli says he's still flabbergasted about the band's growth in popularity and its annual stage-show expansion.

"Our first tour was 1999," Pitrelli said by phone from Lubbock, Texas. "And we didn't know what to expect. We were touring with four roadies and a few lights and a fog machine."

Now, there are two Trans-Siberian Orchestras touring the country. The stage is not only filled with strobes and grids of other stage lights and laser lights, but it also houses a core band, back-up singers and a chamber-size string section.

"It's nuts," said Pitrelli, who has been coming to Salt Lake ever since TSO made its Utah debut in 2003. "It keeps getting bigger. I guess it's better than the other way around."

For years the band has played the E Center, only filling a quarter of the arena the first year and then moving to half the next. Last year the band played two full-size sold-out shows in one day in the E Center. And this year it's the EnergySolutions Arena.

"It all starts with an idea," said Pitrelli. "The guy who thought of this whole thing, Paul O'Neil, is the quintessential 'kid in the candy shop.' He has all these ideas and he jots them down on his napkins or wherever he can find the space. And then those ideas are presented to the people who create what Paul has thought about."

This year, the band is touring with approximately 80 crew members — a far cry from the four roadies during the first tour. "By that time we had recorded two albums (Christmas Eve & Other Stories and The Christmas Attic). Paul had the idea of taking the show on the road.

"I thought it would be impossible and told him, 'No way.' I mean who bought the albums? Well, my mom for one, and me. But I didn't think there would be an audience for it. And, sure, we did end up selling a bunch of CDs, but I was still skeptical."

But the tour was a success. Audiences of between 1,100 and 2,000 people attended each show. The next year, O'Neil wanted to make it a bigger show, so he split the band in two and told Pitrelli to take his band to the West while he kept his in the East. "I told him, 'No way.' I didn't think it was going to be as successful. And here I am nearly a decade into this crazy thing and I still tell him, 'No way."'

Pitrelli, who grew up in New York and played with Asia, Megadeth and Alice Cooper, is still amazed at how popular the show has become. "Our demographic is everyone from 7 to 70, and even then we see some infants and very elderly people in the audience. That never happened when I was in Megadeth."

The concert format hasn't changed a lot musically, he said. "As in the past, we do two sets. The first set we play 'Christmas Eve & Other Stories' in its entirety. The second set we like to mix things up and add new songs and rock out. This year is no different. We will be doing some other things. Veteran TSO concertgoers will be surprised and those who have never seen us before will be, hopefully, blown away."

One feature of the second set will be some songs off the upcoming TSO album "Night Castle," which has been in production for a few years because the band is so particular on how it is supposed to sound, said Pitrelli. "We take an awfully long time to make an album. We just want to make sure it lives up to our expectations, as well as our fans', whom we call the 'TSO Community."'

(Thanks: Wesnlisa)

TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA Guitarist AL PITRELLI - "Little Did I Know That The Accident Called 'Christmas In Sarajevo' Would Give A 45-Year-Old A Massive Career Hit"

Stuart Derdeyn at The Ottawa Citizen has filed the following report on the TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA:

Orchestral Holiday Treat An Unexpected Success

Frankly, the whole concept of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra sounds as likely to succeed as guitarist Nigel Tufnel's symphony idea in the movie Spinal Tap. At the height of the Seattle grunge and alt-rock explosion, they formed a 60-piece progressive metal group to perform a Christmas-themed rock opera à la the Who's Tommy or Pink Floyd's The Wall. After all, everyone really wants concept albums to play alongside Nevermind and Jagged Little Pill.

Better still, put together a huge, expensive stage and lightshow to go with the package that can only really hit the road for a few months of the year around the holiday season. That should make big bucks. The label exec signing off on this was putting pen to paper for the last time.

"That's what I thought when I first went into the studio to hear what Paul O'Neill had in mind," says Trans-Siberian Orchestra musical director and guitarist Al Pitrelli. "Then the first song he played was 'Christmas Eve/Christmas In Sarajevo' and I said 'Wow, great piece nobody in America will buy it.'

"Little did I know that the accident called 'Christmas In Sarajevo' would launch five CDs and give a 45-year-old who had more than the allowable kicks at the can a massive career hit."

Debuting in 1996 with Christmas Eve And Other Stories, Trans-Siberian Orchestra reunited Pitrelli and former Savatage bandmates Robert Kinkel, Jon Olivia and singer/lyricist/librettist and producer Paul O'Neill.

O'Neill had the original concept, uniting his seasonal short stories, lyrics and genre-bending compositions into Christmas-themed rock albums. He was clearly onto something.

The group's debut sold 2.5 million copies and remains on the Top 5 Holiday Album charts 11 years later.

Subsequent releases -- The Christmas Attic (1998); the DVD The Ghost Of Christmas Eve (2001) and The Lost Christmas Eve (2004) -- all hit million-selling platinum status, too.

The group is in the ranks of such enduring seasonal faves as New Age instrumentalists Mannheim Steamroller now.

Last year, its catalogue sales were more than 900,000.

"I worked with everyone from Megadeth and Alice Cooper to Céline Dion and Taylor Dane and most of the rest of the guys come from similar musical backgrounds," he says. "From the start, Paul had the sense to let us all throw our musical two cents on the kitchen table when we were putting TSO together and that's why it has such wide appeal. It's a number of different things."

All of which appear to grab concert-goers by the arena-load. Since its '99 tour, TSO's tours rank in the Top 10 for both gross revenues and audience attendance. The 2006 road show was awash in players, pyrotechnics, ambitious stage design and played to over a million fans. Earning an excess of $40 million, it scored high on Billboard's Top 25 Tours chart.

"People have embraced us as part of their existence and part of their holiday season experience and I'm just thrilled to be a part of that," says Pitrelli. "We may only tour a few months out of the year, but scripting out the logistics of ever bigger spectacles starts a few weeks after we finish each time out on the road."

The 2007 production includes 32 trailers, six buses and a 150-person crew, which Pitrelli believes makes it the biggest show on the road at the moment. There is pyro, laser, fog, special effects you might not have seen before and a big entourage of musicians as well.

"But at the same time, there are these incredibly intimate moments with just a singer and an acoustic guitar. Weaving the story in to get the listener to understand that there is much more than just the rock show is key to ensuring that everyone from seven to 70, from the kid in the Slayer T-shirt to the one crocheting gets something that they can enjoy."

Lately, the group is working on getting itself positioned to tour off-season with non-Christmas albums.

"Beethoven's Last Night was the first non-Christmas album we released and we're working on a second one right now called Nightcastle, which is another of Paul's beautiful rock operas. We figure one more after that and we'll start touring spring/summer and the rest of the year. Perhaps the group will eventually even live up to its name, crossing Russia's tundra on a tour."

(Thanks: Wesnlisa)

TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA Guitarist AL PITRELLI Dicusses Christmas Past, TSO Present, And DAVE MUSTAINE

Steve Newton, correspondent for Vancouver's www.Straight.com, has filed the following report on the TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA

Hipsters, beware: there's a hugely popular act that's been packing arenas of late, but you won't be hearing about it on Pitchfork or in Harp and Alternative Press. There's no emo, screamo, or dreamo involved, just heavy doses of Christmas-themed rock opera. As guitarist Al Pitrelli admits over the phone before heading to a sound check in Fresno, California, the success of his decidedly unhip ensemble, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, goes against all odds.

"You're correct, rock opera is not that popular right now," he points out. "But about a dozen years or so ago, Paul O'Neill, Bob Kinkel, Jon Oliva, and myself just sat down and said, 'We want to make a record that's representative of all four of our musical backgrounds.' It's not like we were trying to write a record that was current, or get on the charts, or keep up with kids 20, 30 years younger than us.

"I think what happened is that the community that listens to TSO just gets the honesty of it," he continues. "You know, when I was growin' up there was something just real honest about that music. When you listened to [Alice Cooper's] Billion Dollar Babies, that was a record that made no sense, but it was a masterpiece. And when you listened to Blue Oyster Cult or the Allman Brothers or AC/DC, they were just writin' stuff that they loved, and if the population took hold, then great."

In + Out:

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Al Pitrelli sounds off on the things that enquiring minds want to know.

On the time he spent in Megadeth, working under founder Dave Mustaine: "Dave's a taskmaster, and as long as you hit the deck every night and represented Megadeth the way he wanted you to represent it, he had no problem. If you didn't, you were gonna get a lashing."

On the strong bond between TSO members: "There's a lot of history between people on the stage, and I think that's something that the audience really senses. It's a band and it's a family; it's not just a bunch of people getting together, putting tuxedos on, and playing for two months."

On which TSO song gets the biggest crowd reaction: "I would say 'Christmas in Sarajevo', because people close their eyes and feel the power behind that piece of music. It's very dark, yet that's what they've all latched onto over the last dozen years."

On his memories of Christmases on Long Island, New York: "We'd go to Radio City [Music Hall] to see the Rockettes' big Christmas show there, go to the tree-lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center–the same trip everybody else grew up on. And now that TSO has become one of those traditions, I find it fascinating."

Pitrelli first collaborated with O'Neill, Kinkel, and Oliva–the other core members of TSO's creative team–while he was a member of prog-metal group Savatage, which released 11 studio recordings between 1983 and 2001, mostly concept albums or rock operas. Over the years, he has also worked as a hired gun for acts like Alice Cooper, Megadeth, Asia, and Joe Lynn Turner. Before that the 45-year-old Long Island native cut his teeth in New York–area cover bands, performing a mix of Humble Pie, Bad Company, Robin Trower, Pat Travers, Johnny Winter, and Rick Derringer tunes–or, as he describes it, "all the cool stuff". But folks with similar classic-rock tastes aren't the only ones snapping up tix for Trans-Siberian Orchestra gigs these days.

"Fortunately for us, it kinda crosses every genre and every age demographic," Pitrelli says. "I mean, the first time we did a show, back in '99, we walked on-stage and there were kids with Slayer T-shirts on, sitting next to their grandmothers with crocheted reindeer sweaters. I mean they run from seven to 70, and that's the beauty of it. You go into any of the venues that we play and you see, like, three generations of families sitting together, having a great time enjoying the same stuff."

TSO's latest CD, The Lost Christmas Eve, is its fourth rock opera, and the closing chapter of the holiday trilogy that began with 1996's Christmas Eve and Other Stories. In the group's current bio, producer-lyricist and primary composer O'Neill states that The Lost Christmas Eve is "about so much more than Christmas. It's a rock album that you can listen to while driving your car."

Pitrelli agrees. "There's Christmas songs on there, obviously, and it's become part of a lot of people's Christmas traditions, but at the end of the day it's just a flamin' rock 'n' roll record. I mean, this album is pretty ferocious–as are all the records, you know, the three Christmas ones, Beethoven's Last Night–which is not a holiday rock opera–and the new one that we're working on, Nightcastle. I mean, this is as if you took Pink Floyd and Yes and Kansas and AC/DC and mixed it all together and added some elements of gospel, jazz, and country."

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's current lineup sees Pitrelli playing with a seven-piece band, a seven-piece string section, and 10 vocalists, so at any given time there are about two dozen performers on-stage–and that's just the West Coast edition. The year after TSO's debut, popular demand required that its membership be split in two for touring purposes.

"There was physically no way to go from Boston to San Francisco overnight," Pitrelli explains. Now he and his wife, keyboardist Jane Mangini, run the West Coast ensemble, while composer-coproducer Kinkel is in charge of its East Coast counterpart. Between the large number of musicians, the immense staging, and the state-of-the-art light show–which uses extensive pyrotechnics and lasers–it's an immense undertaking to get the group's Christmas-themed stories of loss and redemption across to the public. With little or no commercial-radio play, the group counts on word of mouth to help fill hockey rinks across North America, and apparently word is getting out. The two bands will perform nearly 100 shows over a seven-week span, playing to more than half a million people.

So with his soul mate and several long-time friends along for the ride, Pitrelli must get quite the warm, fuzzy feeling from TSO's Christmas tunes, right? Not necessarily. "Christmas wasn't always a happy holiday," he relates. "So sometimes it affects me in a good way, and sometimes it affects me in a bad way. But no matter what, it kinda puts you back on your heels and makes you take inventory of the year that's gone by and what's happened–people we've lost, people we've gained.

"Christmas runs the emotional gamut, and you can hear a lot of that on our records because not all of it is uplifting; some of it is dark, some of it is sad," he continues. "And we're just not afraid to bring attention to that, saying, 'You know what? It's okay to laugh, and it's okay to cry.'"

(Thanks: Wesnlisa)