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Just for our fan club, we've posted a streaming version of the Christmas Eve & Other Stories Audio Christmas Special narrated by OSSIE DAVIS!  You can listen to it by clicking here.  You can't find this anywhere else, so enjoy and pass it along to your friends!

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On its first album in nearly five years, Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) returns to the theme that has made the band a perennial best-seller and top concert draw: the magic of Christmas. The group's fourth rock opera and the closing chapter of its holiday trilogy, The Lost Christmas Eve is an inspirational tale weaving together messages of hope, faith and compassion.

 

The follow-up to the multi-platinum Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996) and the platinum-selling The Christmas Attic (1998), The Lost Christmas Eve is a musical journey of loss and redemption. Its story – set to a diverse soundtrack that fuses elements of rock, classical, pop, folk, Broadway and R&B – encompasses a rundown hotel, an old toy store, a blues bar, a gothic cathedral and their respective inhabitants, whose destinies are intertwined during a single enchanted night in New York City.

 

“It's a story about Christmas and its ability to change endings,” says Paul O'Neill, TSO's creator, producer, lyricist and primary composer. “If there's anything in the past that you regret, hopefully this album will give you an excuse to go back and correct it. I think that's what Christmas is about – it gives you an excuse to be kinder, to apologize for a past wrong, to do good. But this album to us is about so much more than Christmas. It's a rock album that you can listen to while driving your car, it has songs that let you mellow out after a rough day at work and of course it has songs to get into a holiday mood.”

 

TSO's first album of Christmas music in six years, The Lost Christmas Eve features the group's trademark “symphonic rock” renditions of both holiday standards such as “Faith Noel” – a medley of two timeless melodies, “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “The First Noel” – and classical excerpts, including Mozart's “Queen of the Night.” It also showcases original TSO material, ranging from such dazzling instrumentals as “Wizards In Winter” to such stirring vocal pieces as “What Child Is This?”

 

Two other significant selections hearken back to TSO's past. One, “Christmas Canon Rock,” is another take on Pachelbel's “Canon in D Minor,” which TSO first tackled on The Christmas Attic as “Christmas Canon.” As its title implies, “Christmas Canon Rock” is a livelier rendition, swapping out child choirs in favor of a full rock band. TSO has included the track in its live concerts in the past, but The Lost Christmas Eve marks the first time it appears in recorded form.

The song initially had to be altered for the stage to accommodate for the lack of a touring child choir, but O'Neill says fan reaction was so strong that the group felt it necessary to capture the live version in the studio. “The fans pushed us over the edge,” O'Neill explains. “After we played it in Boston, some fan – an 18-year-old kid – screamed out, ‘I have to own this record! Where is this record?' We're like, ‘OK, we get the point.'”

 

Another track, “Back To A Reason (Part II),” revisits the very origins of TSO. For the second time, the group appropriates a song originally recorded by Savatage, the legendary hard rock band in which O'Neill and the rest of TSO's creative team – composer Jon Oliva, guitarist Al Pitrelli, and composer/co-producer Robert Kinkel – first collaborated. (TSO's signature hit – “Christmas Eve [Sarajevo 12/24],” a rousing instrumental marriage of “Carol Of The Bells,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and original music – was initially featured on one of Savatage's four rock operas.)

 

Other songs find TSO experimenting. “We always try to introduce things we've never done before,” O'Neill says. “We'd never had a brass quartet (‘Christmas Concerto'), so we put that in there. We'd never had any honky-tonk; that's why we put in ‘Christmas Nights In Blue.' We wanted a Leon Russell-meets-Joe Cocker kind of sound. We always try to keep growing, and keep pushing the envelope. We're constantly looking for new angles to keep it fresh.”

 

Expect some of these new songs to be included in TSO's annual Christmas Eve and Other Stories tour, which, in only six years, has become one of the most successful tours in the country. Live, TSO entails an orchestral string section, a full rock band, several vocalists, a narrator, a stunning light show and extensive pyrotechnics. 2004 promises the group's biggest production yet, as it moves into such storied venues as New York City's Madison Square Garden, Cleveland's Gund Arena and Portland's Rose Garden.

 

In what has become as much of a TSO trademark as its soaring guitars and symphonies, the group will once again morph into two touring bands this winter. The only band in rock that has ever succeeded in staging dual tours – and perhaps the only one with sufficient personnel to even attempt such a feat – TSO does so only during the winter, thereby ensuring that audiences have the opportunity to experience Christmas Eve live during the proper season. “It's an attempt to bring our music to as many people as possible,” O'Neill says, “and still be able to capture the magic of the holidays.” Accordingly, the two touring bands anchored by Pitrelli and Kinkel will perform nearly 100 shows over a seven-week span, playing to over half a million people in all.

 

As with “Christmas Canon Rock,” TSO's celebrated concert performances have become well known for introducing fans to new material. The trend began during the group's inaugural tour, when TSO debuted several tracks from the then-unreleased rock opera Beethoven's Last Night (2000). That album's material continues to provide some of the band's most exhilarating concert moments. This winter, expect TSO to perform at least one new song from Nightcastle, the group's next album, tentatively planned for a spring/summer 2005 release.

 

“As a band we like having no limits,” O'Neill says. “I like to think of our albums as large, old castles. They're magical from a distance or even close up, and the further you delve into them, the more there is to find. It's magical just to go inside, and it's magical just looking at the walls and wondering what might be behind them. But if you ever knock down a wall, what's behind it may – or may not – be the most magical thing of all.”