Trans-Siberian Orchestra is preparing for their annual holiday tour
十一月 4th, 2010 maxmailTrans-Siberian Orchestra is preparing for their annual holiday tour. However Paul O’Neill, the group’s founder, is still keeping an eye on their upcoming move to Broadway. According to O’Neill, two rock musicals for Broadway are in the works by him and the other creative partners. The furthest along is “Romanov: What Kings Must Whisper,” which is a rock opera set in the 1918 Russian Bolshevik Revolution. O’Neill says it is completely scored and written and is ready to go. He added that actually “Romanov” was intended to be the first album for Trans-Siberian Orchestra in 1994. However, several people with lots of Broadway credibility heard it. They said it was too good for just doing a record and that it could be a musical on Broadway. We pulled back on it because I’ve always wanted to work on Broadway. “Gutter Ballet” is on tap as well. O’Neill originally began the project as an album in 1989 for the band Savatage. O’Neill and Jon Oliva, Savatage frontman, are planning to rewrite some of the original album songs. O’Neill said some themes have already been used on other projects, however we won’t be doing the same songs for two separate rock operas. There aren’t any fast or hard deadlines for either project to hit the Broadway stage. However O’Neill says Trans-Siberian Orchestra will be releasing an album in both cases prior to a production opening. We doing the opposite of what is normally done on Broadway. Usually there is a Broadway musical and then a cast album is released. We will release an album, then go to Broadway. However, before anything happens O’Neill will need to find the right voices for the right characters. The process is a painstaking one that sometimes has to take a back seat when there are touring concerns for Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Time is my biggest problem, O’Neill said laughing. I need a magical stopwatch to freeze time so I can catch up. After our winter tour is finished, we technically have January off. We will look at things and decide where we want to concentrate our energies and talent and decided what we want to do next. The winter tour for Trans-Siberian Orchestra will kick off with companies in Omaha, NE and Youngstown, Ohio in November. The trek will wrap up on December 30 in Auburn Hills, MI and St. Louis. The outing in 2009 drew over 1.2 million fans and grossed almost $45 million. A special vinyl will be released in the US of “Night Castle,” the latest album of TSO’s from 2009. “Beethoven’s Last Night” will be released in Europe. Ninety pages worth of poetry will be restored. When it was issued originally in 2000 the pages had to be cut out of the CD booklet. In addition O’Neill is preparing for the first European tour for Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It will kick off in the middle of March with dates in Austria and Germany. O’Neill said, I’m very nervous, honestly, about that tour. Last year around 40 people came to review the band in preparation. We received banner headlines such as, enough pyro for barbecuing a whole school of whales. From there, things just got better. I thought, whoa, it’s great to get Buzz. However it’s scary as well because then in terms of the type you have to be able to live up to it. You don’t ever want to let your audiences down. We have lots of work to do.