Photography by Ulysses Pabuna
The night of December 3 was one full of surprises, the first of which was that I made it to downtown Toronto in record time: 40 minutes. That’s in rush hour, avoiding the Gardiner. Lakeshore was my friend.
The second surprise was dinner at Chipotle—that is, I’m surprised I didn’t spill more of my tacos on my sweater. They’re messy, but good.
The third and by far the biggest surprise was how much I enjoyed the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO). I walked into the ACC that night barely knowing anything about them, only that “they’re awesome,” according to my friend Tom. He’s the fan, he scored the tickets, and he promised me it would be a great time.
He was right.
Now I love me a good concert, and, if you’ve read any of my other reviews, I tend to like my music loud and boisterous, to put it euphemistically. TSO can bring the volume, but there were also many quiet, delicate moments—not that that’s a bad thing. As far as I can tell, TSO tends to tour in winter, or at least they always seem to end up in Toronto in December, so there’s a lot in the way of winter themes both visually and musically. Their albums are often concept albums or rock operas. And they really, really love Christmas. They have three albums that form their “Christmas trilogy”: Christmas Eve and Other Stories, The Christmas Attic, and The Lost Christmas Eve.
This show was, in essence, a Christmas show. In the first half of the concert, they played through The Christmas Attic—this tour represents the first time that they’ve played that album live. Its story, in a nutshell, is this: a little girl explores the attic of her home on Christmas Eve, finds an old chest full of letters including those of a long-lost couple, reads said letters and ultimately reunites said long-lost couple. Aww.
It broke down like this: a huge chest was placed in the centre of the stage, and it opened up to reveal most of the band within it. Then, one vocalist would do spoken-word pieces between the songs, talking about the letters the little girl was reading, and then the band would launch into a song that illustrated the letter in question.
Step one: place chest on stage.
Step two: slowly open chest…
…to reveal band.
Step three: add spoken word.
Step four: fire.
There’s more to the story of The Christmas Attic, and there are strong Christian overtones to it, too. If you want to read the whole thing, it’s here. To be honest, I could’ve done without the religious stuff, as I find it irksome (to put it politely), but I ignored that and enjoyed the show nonetheless.
TSO is a progressive rock band with parts of an orchestra: there are two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, an electric violinist, two keyboardists, a string section and about 10 vocalists, either singing lead or as part of a choir. And that string section—they’re from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. So TSO was playing with TSO. We all had a chuckle at that when they mentioned it.
As the show progressed, I noticed quite a bit of ’80s-style guitar wankery, which made me wonder what these musicians had done before TSO. Turns out some of them were in Savatage, a prog-metal/power-metal band that was prominent in the ’80s and early ’90s. I’ve heard of Savatage, but can’t say that I’ve listened to them. But, wankery aside, I do love hearing call-and-response between singer and guitarist and I love guitar harmonies, and at one point they did both simultaneously. That was pretty cool.
The second half of the show was comprised of TSO’s classics. There was still a Christmas theme happening, but it wasn’t too strong. At times, the guitarists and violinist ran out into the crowd, going up the stairs on the 100 level and interacting with fans. There were a few points during the show where they would strap themselves into some raised platforms that would go out high above the crowd and rotate.
One set of raised, rotating platforms.
Lasers!
They also did some pieces of classical music (e.g., Beethoven, Liszt; some of that took the form of a keyboardist duel) and other carols, or really, their heavier versions of carols, e.g., “Carol of the Bells”—they ended the show with that one.
The show was full of video and smoke and fire and sparkles and lights and lasers, plus they did a brief cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” and they topped it all off with fireworks at the end! For two and a half hours, it was pure rock-and-roll spectacle.
And now, a sample of TSO’s music. If you were on the Internet in 2005, you’ve probably seen this video. This is “Wizards in Winter”:
(Originally posted on mississaugalife.ca.)
Leo Graziani 