Magical, musical moments

Paul O'Neill started giving interviews at six in the morning, so it would be understandable if the man behind Trans-Siberian Orchestra sounded tired and grumpy. But instead, O'Neill is unfailingly polite and speaks enthusiastically about "Christmas Eve and Other Stories," which comes to the Cape Girardeau Show Me Center on Wednesday.

His enthusiasm is understandable. Since its first tour in 1999, the success of O'Neill's Christmas rock opera has steadily grown to include more cities, larger venues and two touring groups.

This year, TSO makes appearances in more than 80 North American cities and will be seen by an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 people.

Bringing the show to each city takes 10 tractor-trailers and 16 tour buses.

"I believe in huge productions," O'Neill said.

Being a huge production, TSO usually comes to large venues in big cities, but this year the show is making some stops at smaller venues, including Cape Girardeau, which happens to be the smallest city on the tour.

"This year we deliberately wanted the tour to

go to places we didn't go to before," O'Neill said. "We wanted to get people to see the show who haven't had the opportunity to do so before. We love the shock and awe of the people who see it for the first time."

The number of people who have not had the opportunity to see the show is getting increasingly smaller since O'Neill created TSO in 1996 to record the album "Christmas Eve and Other Stories."

A year before Toss' creation, O'Neill was the lead guitarist for the band Savantage, which recorded the song "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" in response to the war in the Balkans.

O'Neill was inspired to create the song after hearing about a cellist who returned to his homeland of Sarajevo during the war to find rubble and destruction and as a form of defiance, refused to head to a shelter and instead played his cello among the gunfire.

"The image of this white-haired old man on a pile of rubble playing these timeless melodies is such a powerful image," O'Neill said.

The success of "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" led O'Neill to recruit Savantage keyboardist Jon Oliva and musician Robert Kinkel and form TSO. O'Neill is now TSO's composer, lyricist and producer while Kinkel is the composer, co-producer and keyboardist and Oliva a composer.

Another album, "The Christmas Attic" was released in 1998 before TSO took their music on the road in the form of a holiday spectacular that features an orchestral string section, a full rock band, pyrotechnics and light displays.

"We spend money like a drunken sailor when it comes to the stage show," O'Neill said. "It's a very expensive show. It's like $6 million before we even start the first show, but the looks on the audiences' faces make it worth every penny."

Outside the expensive stage production, at the heart of the show is a story about the true meaning of Christmas.

"The Lost Christmas Eve," recounted in between songs throughout the show, tells the story of an angel's visit to Earth on Christmas Eve in order to find one thing that best represents Christmas.

O'Neill sees the holiday season as a time of year that can bring out the best in people. And he said he witnessed this first-hand as a boy growing up in New York City.

The 10-year-old O'Neill was walking with some friends on Christmas Eve when a car accident occurred in front of them. The boys were bracing for a fight among the drivers, but instead the drivers got out of their cars, inquired about each other's well being and exchanged holiday wishes.

"Any other day of the year it'd be World War III," O'Neill said. "Because it was Christmas Eve it turned into a magical moment."

"There's something incredibly magical about this day that effects people. That's why we took it on as a subject for our first rock opera."

Apparently O'Neill was onto something because TSO continues to sell albums and sell out arenas. In 2003, 62 of their 85 shows were sold out, the album "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" has gone platinum and the group's latest album, "The Lost Christmas Eve" debuted at No. 26 on the Billboard top 200 album chart in October.

All of which has taken O'Neill somewhat by surprise.

"With anything, and I've been in the industry over 30 years now, you always hope but never expect," he said. "It's taken off beyond our wildest expectations."

And O'Neill is anticipating a future with continued growth for TSO with greater stage shows and more cities included in the group's Christmas spectacular.

"Honestly, I don't see an ending." he said.

kalfisi@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182