An Evening With TSO

We attended a concert by the Trans Siberian Orchestra (TSO) last night and it was something else. We only had a cellphone camera with us, so unfortunately, the pictures we have to show you are only somewhat decent. Connie and Steve came out with us (see their pre-halloween bash weblog) and Katrina brought Bradley with her (of course).



We were positioned on the second deck of the Ice Palace, right near the front edge so the view was great.



The TSO concert was literally an explosion of light and sound, with all kinds of computer-controlled effects being displayed. They were able to change the colors and types of lights, then they were able to motor-control the overhead racks too. You will see the over-stage appliances moved into all kinds of positions in the following pictures.



They played all of the favorite Christmas pieces that have become popular recently, to include our favorite, Wizards In Winter.



This video of a Christmas display created by Carson Williams, of Mason Ohio, uses TSO's 'Wizards In Winter' piece (which we hadn't heard until seeing this video) and is what convinced us that we would like to see TSO in concert some day.



Sometimes the lighting was so intense on the stage, you couldn't see anything that was going on down there. You can see that the area in front of the stage was also sold out. I mean, the place was packed. I don't know how the people survived the evening sitting that close to the speakers. The audio was so overdriven and unbalanced that many of the softer passages were overpowered by sections that should have been in the background to support the softer passages. Kind of like the light show. Too much, too much, too much...



Eventually, they kicked on the lasers and those things were tracking eveywhere. You can also see that there were directional lamps on scissor-extenders that dropped down from the fixed, overhead racks.



They did the typical fan-style laser shapes, mostly with green units, but they also had a multi-colored unit at center stage. You can see it starting to fan out in this image.



I was interested in the targeting of the lasers to see where they were hitting and I could see that each laser point was carefully laid out to hit some wall, balcony face or ceiling surface to keep from blasting somebody in the eyes. As you can see, one of the green laser points was directed right at the balcony wall in front of us.



Different song, different lighting. The staging was pretty well done, with the exception that the intensity of the lighting tended to visually overpower the stage.



This is when the narrator was speaking, telling a continuing story that was something of an introduction to each piece that began to play after he was done speaking.



And the music plays.



You can see what I meant by the overhead appliances moving around in this picture. The whole system tilted to the left side.



Then it folded into itself and tilted to the right (with more laser shots going off).



They even had pyrotechnical displays to include fireworks and fireballs synchronized to fire off (pun intended) in time with the music. In this shot, you can see the timed and staggered fireballs at the back of the stage and some shooting up from a stand in front of the mini-stage to our left. The neat thing was that they had different colors of flames shooting up, from the regular orangey flames to intense blood red, brilliant jade green and cobalt blue. I don't know what gasses they used to make these colors, but I could see the array of different tanks used for the gas jets by the mini-stage. I wonder how many tanks were in use for the monster fireball array behind the main stage?



There was a sequence that included a dance sketch on the mini-stage, which rose up on cables and had smoke and fire efects dancing around it. Unfortunately, the lighting was so intense, I practically had to close my eyes. This was the best shot I could get because it was like trying to stare at a strobe light constantly going off in front of your nose...



The final scene where the overhead appliances were tilted up and the white spots were turned on. Time to head out now...



It's going to take some time to get all of these people out of here. In talking later on with some people about the concert, it seems that TSO had a show last night and one for this evening in California. We were wondering how they could do 2 shows so close together in time, yet so far apart in distance and we found out they have 2 touring groups. Unfortunately, we had the 'B Group', which might explain the issues regarding the unusual audio intensity, the strange musical balancing and depth and the overpowering lights.

To be honest though, it was still an awesome concert, and it was so weird to see the huge amount of people in the stands that were well beyond 50 years in age. We were watching one older gentleman near us who would start knee-slapping and toe-tapping when the music was seemingly charged with energy, then he would stop moving whenever the lead and backup guitars performed their renditions of 'Eddie Van Halen Goes Nuts' riffs, thereby breaking up the continuity and flow of the rhythm. When it was good, the old gent was feeling it, and when it got weird...

Well, the old gent just waited them out...

All-in-all, it was a good time for everyone though.