After 20 years, Trans-Siberian Orchestra still giving it their all

According to guitarist Al Pitrelli, Trans-Siberian Orchestra shows of yesteryear looked significantly different than the spectacles fans have come to expect.

“In ’99, we started out with one 24-foot box truck and five machines and a couple lights to where we were last year with 18 trucks,” he said during a conference call. “It’s just gotten bigger and better and crazier every year.”

For the third year in a row, the symphonic rock band will perform “The Ghosts of Christmas Eve” during its annual Christmas-themed winter tour, which returns to the Spokane Arena on Friday.

The music may be the same, but the show changes from year to year, much to the delight of fans and members of Trans-Siberian Orchestra themselves.

When Pitrelli and drummer Jeff Plate spoke in October, the pair had yet to learn what the 2018 show would look like.

“That’s my favorite thing to do is show up in Omaha for the first day of rehearsal, walk into the arena and go ‘Oh my God. Really?’ You turn into a 16-year-old at your first rock concert all over again every time,” Pitrelli said. “If Jeff and I and the rest of folks in the organization feel that way, we just can’t wait to see the expressions on the audience’s faces change.”

“The Ghosts of Christmas Eve” has been a fan-favorite since it was showcased in a 1999 made-for-TV movie.

The story follows a young runaway who hides in an abandoned theater on Christmas Eve. While there, she watches musical performances by Trans-Siberian Orchestra, presented as ghostly visions from the theater’s past.

The rock opera will be performed in its entirety, but fans can also look forward to six or seven new songs the band has worked into the set list.

Adding new songs into the show is something the band does to please fans who see the band year after year, fans whom band members affectionately refer to as “repeat offenders.”

“We owe it to them and all the other 900,000 people that came to see us last year, we owe them at least something different each year,” Pitrelli said. “We want to keep everybody on the edge of their seats, and everybody has their favorite songs.”

After almost 25 years together and 20 years on the road, the members of Trans-Siberian Orchestra have formed bonds with audience members they see time and time again.

Pitrelli mentioned a fan who had recently seen his 500th Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, and Plate brought up the autograph line the band does after each show, free of charge.

“We’ve been doing this since 1999, so for 20 years you see the same people come through the line every year, but that person that came through in 1999 with their son or their daughter, well that son and daughter is now grown up and they’re coming through with their family,” Plate said. “It’s just been a very, very cool experience to be part of this connection, really, with this audience.”

Both Pitrelli and Plate credit that bond to founder, producer, composer and lyricist Paul O’Neill, who died in 2017.

“One of the things that nobody understands about what Paul O’Neill and his family created is, not only did he create an art form that didn’t exist and this touring entity and the recording, he created relationships because of this,” Pitrelli said.

Despite the number of “repeat offenders,” Pitrelli and Plate also recognize that at each show there are many people seeing Trans-Siberian Orchestra for the first time.

With this in mind, they work to approach each show, no matter when it falls in the tour, as if it’s the first, ensuring they aren’t going through the motions.

“You’ve got to go out there and give it your all and really, really play this like you mean it,” Plate said.

“Everybody in that audience deserves a perfect first show,” Pitrelli added. “If it’s the sixth double on a weekend, maybe you’re tired, maybe you don’t feel well, maybe you’ve got the flu, whatever. But as soon as the house lights go down, the stage lights up, and you hear the roar of that audience, it doesn’t matter what you feel like. That’s it. It’s their first show, and it’s my first show at that moment as well. And there’s nothing cooler on the planet than that energy that is handed back and forth between the folks on the stage and the folks in the audience. And as Jeff said, if that doesn’t wake you up then you don’t deserve to be there.”