Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) will celebrate its landmark 30th anniversary with a major winter tour featuring a spectacular, reimagined staging of its treasured tale, "The Ghosts of Christmas Eve," followed by a high-energy second set. Renowned for delivering fans the ultimate "value for their dollar," TSO pairs its legendary audio/visual experience, complete with over-the-top lasers, pyrotechnics, and special effects, with fan-friendly ticket pricing that welcomes generations of fans year after year.
"Thirty years in, we never take a single person in that audience for granted," said TSO music director and guitarist Al Pitrelli. "With the economy the way that it is right now, it shouldn't be a mortgage payment for a family to come out to see us. Paul O'Neill [TSO's late creator, lyricist, and composer] was very adamant about giving people in the audience more 'show' than they could've even imagined, and that's what we do every year. We reimagine the show, we rebuild it, we make it bigger than last year so people come back again. I want you to look and go 'Oh my God, they outdid themselves one more time!'. We want to make sure you guys can come out and celebrate because you and everyone in that audience are the greatest fans in the world."
The foundation for this milestone was laid in 1996, when Paul O'Neill launched a project that would forever alter the music and holiday landscape. Since its formation, TSO has grown into a critically acclaimed, multi-platinum powerhouse progressive rock group, generating more than $1 billion in gross ticket sales and establishing its annual "rock theater" tour as a multi-generational tradition. Now, three decades later, the group is proud to bring this treasured production to cities across North America once again.
As O'Neill explained in 2010, "When someone goes to a TSO concert, we don't want them to walk away saying 'that was a great show' or 'that was worth it' or even 'that was the best show I've seen in a long time.' We want them to say, 'Man, that was the best show ever; we just ripped that band off.'"
Based on TSO's TV show and multi-platinum DVD, The Ghosts of Christmas Eve follows the journey of a runaway who breaks into an abandoned vaudeville theater on December 24. While seeking shelter from the cold, the teen is discovered by the theater's caretaker, who uses the ghosts and spirits from the building's past to turn her life around.
The rock opera features beloved songs originally forged by O'Neill and the group's composers -- tracks that have evolved into massive, permanent fixtures of modern culture. TSO's signature hit, "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24," has achieved rare status as an untouchable seasonal juggernaut. Standing as the #3 best-selling holiday digital single in music history, the track alone has amassed more than 300 million global streams. Decades after its initial recording, the RIAA 3x Platinum-certified track remains in heavy seasonal radio rotation, dominates commercial soundtracks, and serves as the global standard for synchronized neighborhood and commercial animated light displays every winter.
Alongside the group's signature single: TSO's brilliant, Pachelbel-inspired "Christmas Canon," which itself commands over 250 million streams, and enduring fan-favorites like "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Mad Russian Christmas," "Wizards in Winter," "Requiem (the Fifth)" and "This Christmas Day," which also continue to anchor dozens of major holiday playlists across Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music, commanding top streaming numbers worldwide, year after year.
