Geek Girl Navigating the World – The Trans-Siberian Orchestra Experience

I was recently surprised with tickets to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra kick off this year’s tour by a couple of friends of mine.  I’m not sure if they actually knew whether I liked the band or whether they just hoped I’d be cool with going to a concert when I went to go see them.  Fortunately, it all worked out to everyone’s advantage, I think.

My first encounter with any of Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s music was when I was in college.  I was riding home to visit my parents with a friend of the family and he had a CD with a whole mix of Christmas music on it.  Since we were actually headed home for Christmas, I didn’t mind listening to them.  One of the songs on the CD was “Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” Up until that point, I had never considered Tchaikovsky’s compositions to be something that would go well with metal guitar musicianship.  Asking what would happen if electric guitars were used to play one of the most delicately chiming songs ever created just hadn’t popped into my mind.  But, blaring from that radio as we drove over miles of frozen Interstate highway, was that magic combination.

I had enough education in classical music and enough appreciation for it after a decade of piano lessons to know that Tchaikovsky loathed “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” He’d composed it to be played upon a harpsichord and was not happy that it proved to be one of his most enduring and popular pieces.  I kind of like it, too (sorry, Tchaikovsky), especially with Disney animated fairies prancing around on ice while it’s playing.  Even before my first viewing of “Fantasia”, I had always thought of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” as a very visual piece.  The name always did make me envision fairies, but the music itself could always inspire a variety of scenes in my imagination.

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra version was a revelation.  It became darker and more sinister, a soundtrack far more suited to some of the dark fantasy books that I was reading than the sweet sanitized fairies offered up by the Disney corporation.  I’d always known that how a person plays a piece can change the perception of the music, but in the case of most classical music, it had been a case of performances that I either liked or disliked because the musicians in question were either good or bad.  “Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy” was a transformation.  It was a reinterpretation that completely overturned everything that I had ever thought about that particular piece of music.

I loved it.  I felt a little guilty for loving it, because I knew that my piano teacher, a dear, sweet  lady who reveres classical music would have hated it.  She would not, for even a second, ever listen to rock & roll, much less something that could come so close to metal.  No, she would not like what Trans-Siberian Orchestra did to Tchaikovsky in the slightest.

I asked the driver if I could repeat the song, just so I could hear it again.  It was one of those oppressive, gloomy winter days where the clouds make an iron gray sky from horizon to horizon and the world was monochromatic around us, just shades of black and white and gray.  The only real color in the world seemed to be the occasional car that joined us on the road.  Somehow, the music seemed to go with the atmosphere perfectly, which was even odder given the general sprightliness and optimism “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” generally engenders.   After the second listen, I wrote down the name of both band and song so I would not
forget them.

I got MP3s of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Christmas/Sarajevo” as soon as I was back to my internet connection.  Those two tracks became part of my perennial Christmas playlist (which also includes “The Hat I Got for Christmas is Too Big” by Mel Blanc, “Christmas at Ground Zero” by Weird Al, and “Snoopy’s Christmas” by The Royal Guardsmen), trotted out after Thanksgiving day to be listened to a couple dozen times before I’m so sick of Christmas music everywhere that I want nothing to do with the stuff for at least another year.  That was pretty much all that I really knew about Trans-Siberian Orchestra and I was pretty okay with that.

A few years later, I was idly poking around on the internet and discovered that they did an incredible version of “Carmina Burana” that made me insanely happy to listen to.  Again, it was another one of those things that my piano teacher would really dislike.  I felt a little bit less guilty about this one, since it was one of those songs that I really could predict sounding amazing with crashing guitars thundering through it.

That was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  I liked the music of theirs that I had heard, but I wasn’t really actively searching out their music, either.  If I stumped upon some, I’d listen, generally enjoy it, and then go on about my business.  The songs of theirs that I had were basically oddities on my MP3 player, to be viewed with more than passing interest by the people privileged enough to get a chance to look that closely at my MP3 player.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got to see them in concert.  The friend that I was with brought her nephew, who is very much into the technical aspects of lighting effects and stage shows.  They go regularly to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra because of the stage show.  I didn’t have any idea what I’d be seeing, but I was excited because I knew enough of their music to know that I’d probably really like the show.

The first part of the show was mostly Christmas music.  Ordinarily, I probably would have been back out of that seat faster than you could say “Jingle Bells.”  It’s not that I detest Christmas music, exactly, with the exception of  “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”, it’s more that I detest the idea that Christmas music must be played from November first until Christmas Day and that it’s everywhere.  Everyone from the gas station down the street to the local oldies station decides to be ruthlessly, relentlessly festive practically the moment that Halloween ends.  It’s inescapable.

However, this concert wasn’t just Christmas music.  It was Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas music.  The pieces are all familiar, but the arrangements and orchestration change everything around.  Some of it is joyous and celebratory, but it also carries a darker edge to it.  A big part of the show is a “storyteller” who recites pieces of a long poem in between the songs.  The whole idea is to thread all the music into a story.  I do have to say, they do it remarkably well. The pacing was practically spot-on, with just enough poetry interspersed with the music to give the eardrums a chance to adjust for the next song and just enough Christmas music to be entertaining without going into overkill.

The stage pieces were huge and elaborate.  Pieces of the set moved all over the place.  Light was changing colors. There were lasers and there were jets of flame.  They used video screens to great effect. I was particularly impressed with the way that they juxtaposed political imagery with art and portraits to go with the theme of the pieces. My friend’s nephew offered up quite a bit of commentary about how those displays were set up and choreographed, which was actually kind of cool because I didn’t know most of what he was telling me.  It was definitely interesting.

I was largely geeking out over the music selection and the guitars.  The band definitely has some very enviable guitars.  My friend thought it was pretty funny that I could identify at least the manufacturer by the shape of each of them.  I suppose it’s even funnier when you take into account the fact that I don’t actually play guitar.  I want to learn, but that’s another story for another time.

The second half of the show was devoted to other music.  They didn’t play “Carmina Burana” live, which was kind of disappointing. They did, however, play “The Mountain”, which is probably the best rendition of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” I’ve ever heard and the light show that went with that one was just spectacular.  This was the first time that I heard any of their original lyrics and it was also my first encounter with any of their music that was not based on familiar classical pieces.  I can now say that Trans-Siberian Orchestra does my favorite version of “Canon in D” and it may, in fact, be the only version of it that would not soothe me to sleep.

Their selection of musicians and singers is superb. They balance each other out in a way that makes the concert experience great to listen to. It isn’t all rocking out on endless solos or a whole lot of upstaging.  Instead, each band member gets a chance to do some showing off during the show, which lets the audience get to really appreciate the caliber of musicians you’re seeing on stage.  It’s a really nice touch. It’s not often that you get to see someone play electric violin and I, for one, would like to savor the opportunity when it’s presented.  There wasn’t a part of the show that was just adequate or okay, it was really good throughout the entire concert.

The focus of the show is really the music, which is complimented by the light show.  The Christmas part of it even had some fake snow falling into the audience, which offered a brief but welcome respite from the heat of the crowded concert hall.  Trans-Siberian Orchestra excels at including the entire audience in the show and the use some of their set pieces to great advantage to accomplish that. They don’t seem to worry a whole lot about costuming, but that doesn’t really matter all that much, because there was a whole lot of pretty epic hair flipping going on throughout the show. They sound great live, which isn’t always true for every band.  The sound quality was good enough to catch all of the lyrics that were being sung and hear individual guitar parts and individual instruments without distortion.  They also kept the decibel level at a range that made for good visceral vibrating rock without splattering the audience’s eardrums against the back wall.  You could feel the music but it didn’t hurt, which is a tough line to
toe, especially indoors.

After the concert was over, everyone in the band  even came out and signed autographs for the people waiting in line.  They all made an effort to chat with the people in line, ask them what they thought of the show, find out if it was the first show people had been to, and generally make an all-around good impression.

I left the concert extremely happy that I got the chance to see them.  I also picked up two CDs (not either of the Christmas ones, though) and a program.  I’ve listened to the CDs a couple of times apiece since the concert and I’ve enjoyed them.  It doesn’t quite compare to the concert, though.  I have to say, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is definitely better live.