{"id":459978,"date":"2025-12-20T12:10:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/459978\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T12:10:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:10:21","slug":"trans-siberian-orchestras-san-antonio-shows-rely-on-intense-rehearsals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/459978\/","title":{"rendered":"Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s San Antonio shows rely on intense rehearsals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TwoTwo separate Trans-Siberian Orchestra troupes will perform a total of 106 shows in 64 cities from Nov. 13 to Dec. 30. Credit: Jason McEachern<\/p>\n

Jeff Plate sat behind his massive drum kit on a platform high above the stage in the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa waiting for another run through of the concluding segment of \u201cThe Ghosts of Christmas Eve: The Best of TSO and More.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, Plate, two keyboardists and four dancers were back at it, working out the choreography playing out against the giant LED screen that found wolves walking through archways behind them.
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In late October every year, TSO converges on the arena just across the Missouri River from Omaha, bringing some 250 people, 40 trucks of staging, lights, sound equipment, costumes, and spreading them throughout the place.
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The entrance lobby serves as the workroom for pyro and special effects, a long hallway is filled with tables where more than 100 guitars will be signed by band members, one to give away at each show.
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\u201cBackstage\u201d is converted into offices for management, tour production and direction with locker rooms serving as rehearsal spaces \u2014 a mixing board in the showers \u2014 for the bands and singers, a \u201cdance room\u201d with mirrors and spaces filled with costumes and video recording equipment.
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The key word here is bands. There are two TSO troupes, one which goes east from Council Bluffs, the other west \u2014 the only way for TSO to meet the demand that will see it performing 106 shows in 64 cities from Nov. 13 to Dec. 30.<\/p>\n

TSO will stop in San Antonio this Sunday for two separate shows at Frost Bank Center, one at 3 p.m. and another at 7:30 p.m. As of press time, tickets remained for both. <\/p>\n

\u2018Best kept secret\u2019
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So, for the center\u2019s main room, identical stages are built in nearby exhibition hall, then moved to each end of the arena floor, allowing each group to rehearse on its own stage, which tour director Elliot Saltzman said, is the major reason why TSO has organized and rehearsed its tours in Council Bluffs for 18 years.
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\u201cThis is the best kept secret in the music business,\u201d Saltzman said. \u201cWhere can you hang both of these? Some years, the East Coast (staging) and West Coast are inches apart. But we get them in here.\u201d
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As Saltzman delivered the rundown of the setup, pointing out changes for the 2025 show, like putting the 10 singers in lines on each side of the broad, clean stage, the east group with Plate at his kit began warming up for its rehearsal.
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The weeks of rehearsals aren\u2019t really needed to get the music in place, since most of the TSO band members and singers return each year.
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\u201cWe\u2019ve played \u2018Christmas Eve\/Sarajevo\u2019 3,000 times each,\u201d Plate said while sitting on a couch with Al Pitrelli, who leads the other TSO unit. \u201cWhen we come back to rehearsals, you brush the dust off musically, things really kind of come together pretty quick\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most intense part of our rehearsals is the main stage. With all the production, there\u2019s a million moving parts of these shows,\u201d Plate continued. \u201cThese guys have to get everything set up and coordinated. It\u2019s a team effort all the way around. There\u2019s 20 people, basically in the band. \u201cBut there\u2019s what, another 50 in production.\u201d
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As the rehearsal moved on from the opening segments and a piece from \u201cBeethoven\u2019s Last Night,\u201d the TSO album that is getting a 25th anniversary salute in the second half of show, producers, choreographer and Jon Oliva, who wrote songs with TSO\u2019s late founder\/producer\/songwriter Paul O\u2019Neill, settled in for a run through of the show.
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\u201cWe have Brian Hartley, who\u2019s one of the masterminds behind all of this,\u201d Saltzman said. \u201cHe is the designer of the show, the content. We have a back room there where we have four content editors working around the clock.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Brian has a change, when you see how sophisticated and 3D it is, that has to be made,\u201d Saltzman said. \u201cYou have to realize it. We don\u2019t have a second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Genre-defying spectacle
<\/strong>
During rehearsal, less than a week before the first shows, Hartley sat a table about 50 feet from the stage, making notes on his computer, talking with choreographers, lighting technicians and producers, unearthing the details of the show, from saving a couple minutes of lift time for the show\u2019s five platforms to how the drones will be configured during a set piece near the end of the show.
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The Trans-Siberian Orchestra show is unique, a combination of musical theatre and an arena concert spectacle of lights, video and pyro and distinctive, genre-defying music, created by O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n

A guitarist, producer and songwriter, O\u2019Neill incorporated the sounds with which he grew up into the music he wrote first for the band Savatage, then, in the mid 1990s, Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
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\u201cGrowing up in New York City, you go to Madison Square Garden. You see Kiss, you see Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, AC\/DC,\u201d said guitarist Pitrelli, a core original TSO member and New Yorker.\u00a0 \u201cDown the block is Radio City and down the block the New York Philharmonic was playing Lincoln Center. And you\u2019ve got the theater district on Broadway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cPaul loved it all. When we were kids, AM radio, Two styles of music, good and bad. There it is,\u201d Pitrelli said.
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But Plate, who\u2019s also been with TSO for three decades, says music alone isn\u2019t what is now bringing three generations of fans \u2014 \u201cwe call them repeat offenders\u201d Pitrelli quipped \u2014 to TSO\u2019s shows.
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\u201cThe story \u2018The Ghost of Christmas Eve\u2019 was something that people just kind of realized, \u2018Wow, this is talking to me,\u2019\u201d Plate said. \u201cThe more I\u2019ve done these albums and these tours and listen to these lyrics and these stories, it really connects\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul was very conscious about trying to incorporate a lot of everything into the show,\u201d he added. \u201cBut you wrap that up in the story, in these lyrics. it hits me, hits me right in my heart, But that\u2019s not just me, that\u2019s millions of people out there, and this is why they come back every year.\u201d
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There was no pyro during the east group\u2019s rehearsal on the Saturday before the tour was to begin. That, Saltzman said, would be built into the stages and tested in the following three days.
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But Pitrelli and Plate know what to expect when the balls of fire starting shooting off around them.<\/p>\n

\u201cEver open your barbecue to check your steak, you get hit in the face, that\u2019s what it\u2019s like,\u201d\u00a0Pitrelli said. \u201cIt\u2019s hot up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, there\u2019s going to be pyro like five feet behind me,\u201d Plate said \u201cWe\u2019ll test all this. We get up there and \u2018Is it too hot? Is it too this?\u2019 It comes and goes so fast. Honestly, I\u2019m so used to it. I don\u2019t even think about it when I\u2019m up there playing. I know here it comes, there it goes. But the people in the back of the arena are like \u201cOh my God, how does he do that? I could feel it back here. That\u2019s amazing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hitting the road
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Four days later, Plate and the east group were to leave Council Bluffs to travel to Green Bay, Wisconsin for their first 2025 show.
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That same night, the west group was to play the Mid-America Center to begin its half of the TSO tour.
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\u201cWe do what nobody else has ever replicated before in our business,\u201d said Saltzmann, who manages tours for Joan Jett as well as working with TSO. \u201cWe go in, sometimes without a pre-rig at five o\u2019clock in the morning, chalk the floor. Six o\u2019clock, we unload 18, 19, 20 trucks, and we\u2019re ready for a sound check six hours later.
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\u201cThen we do a show. We have an intermission in between, and then we do another show,\u201d he said. \u201cWe get into trucks and our busses, and we do another two shows the next day, and the next day. We\u2019ll do eight shows a week. We have done 10 shows in a week, and that\u2019s with basically building a small city every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

That intense holiday-season touring\u00a0schedule requires the TSO tours to be redundant in multiple ways.
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\u201cWe can\u2019t send the truck back or we can\u2019t cancel the show and make it up later like all these groups do because we can\u2019t make it up,\u201d Saltzman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, TSO has spare busses and trucks stationed around the country, and \u201ceverybody knows what everybody else does\u201d so they can fill in, even the drum techs, who have to know how to play the full show in case Plate or the west drummer are out for a day or two.
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Three-plus hours after he hit the cymbals and kick drum for the first time, Plate left the stage after a rehearsal that got thumbs up from the producers \u2014 and captivated visitors, even without the pyro.
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Then it was flip-flop time. After an hour break, the east group headed back into the locker rooms for the evening and Pitrelli and the west troupe took their stage in the arena to run through the show that they\u2019d be doing for real in five days.
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It\u2019s all business as usual for this one-of-a-kind combination of a rock band and orchestra that has been delighting fans for 25 years-plus of tours.<\/p>\n

$55-$174, 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 21, Frost Bank Center, 1 Frost Bank Center Drive, (210) 444-5140, frostbankcenter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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