TSO starts the holiday season with a bang and new material

October 25, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

By JOHN BENSON

vindicator correspondent

The original deadline for Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) to turn in its long-awaited second secular album “Night Castle” came and went in July 2005.

In talking to TSO co-founder Paul O’Neill about the act’s songwriting and recording process, it’s a surprise the much-delayed project recently saw the light of day, four years after the fact.

“We try to build every album like old medieval castles,” said O’Neill, calling from New York City.

“They look cool, and the closer you get, the cooler it is. So we try to do every album, every concert, like that and it’s very much like the ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Some people can read it and you just see it as an action adventure. Some people can see it and say its meaning is that one person can make a difference. Different people will find different things in it depending on their mood, their age, what’s going on in their lives. It can be pure entertainment, pure escapism.”

Originally conceived as a conventional 10-song effort, “Night Castle” bloated into its recently released form as a double-disc half-rock, half-rock opera album, complete with a 68-page booklet with all the lyrics and story and illustrations.

When O’Neill looks over the new material, which is about a girl on a beach who meets a New York City stranger with a fantastical story, he points to the song “Child of the Night” as defining “Night Castle.”

“That song came to be when I heard [TSO performers] Valentina Porter and Alexa Goddard sing,” said O’Neill, who worked as a manager/promoter for Madonna, Michael Bolton, Aerosmith and Bon Jovi.

“It was a classic case of one plus one equals 10. Like when Simon & Garfunkel or Crosby, Stills & Nash sing together, they all have great individual voices but when they are in harmony, forget it. And the voices of Val and Alexa were so spectacular when they sang in harmony that ‘Child of the Night’ was written about their voices and that’s on the nonrock-opera part of the album.”

For fans attending TSO’s Nov. 1 shows at the Covelli Centre, new songs such as “Child of the Night,” “Night Enchanted” and “The Flight of Cassandra” will make up part of the second half program, with tradition winning out again as the band performs the popular “Christmas Eve and Other Stories” for its first act.

There’s no denying over the past decade that this Pink Floyd-sounding rock act has become one of the biggest annual holiday tours around.

However, there’s another side to TSO. Specifically, it’s the idea that the prog-rock leaning outfit can cross over into the nonholiday music rock world.

While its 2000 secular effort “Beethoven’s Last Night” was well received among its faithful, there is hope that “Night Castle” breaks the band into a higher stratosphere.

Still, no matter what success TSO receives with “Night Castle,” which it hopes to fully support next spring with a full world tour, O’Neill admits the theatrical rock act will forever be connected with its holiday trilogy – 1996’s “Christmas Eve and Other Stories,” 1998’s “The Christmas Attic” and “The Lost Christmas Eve.”

Therein lies the rub for O’Neill and his partners, to build a new future without trashing its past.

“At one point in our lives, we always wanted to write a trilogy about Christmas,” O’Neill said. “And that’s done, out of the way and in the can. Basically, we just want to be known for our art and not to be pigeonholed in any way. It’s a great niche to crack and it’s blown us away that it’s been as successful as it has been, but it’s not all that we do.”

if you go

Who: Trans-Siberian Orchestra

When: 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., Nov. 1

Where: Covelli Centre, Youngstown

Tickets: $47.25 and $58 and $68.25 at the box office