When it comes down to it, art is about touching emotions says Paul O’Neill, creator of the musical phenomenon Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO).

And, in this native New Yorker’s view, there are three kinds of art:

Bad art, good art and great art.

"Bad art has no effect on you emotionally. You walk past a bad painting and never notice it. Or you don’t even hear bad music," says the producer-composer-lyricist.

Good art makes you feel emotions you’ve felt before, he says.

"Great art, and this is the hardest thing to do, makes you feel an emotion you’ve never felt before. What does it feel like to be missing a child on Christmas Eve (the subject of one of TSO’s songs)? If you can make a listener feel that you’ve done something. Anger is the easiest emotion to trigger. But laughter, sympathy, all those things are much, much harder to trigger, but the rewards are greater."

And that’s what Trans-Siberian Orchestra is going for with a unique two-company (East and West units) holiday tour of America of its rock opera. Their music is "symphonic rock," blending elements of hard rock, Broadway, R&B and classical stylings into TSO’s original compositions, symphony excerpts and contemporary adaptations of holiday material.

It is not hyperbole when its publicists suggest TSO is rapidly becoming a modern American holiday tradition.

Their live shows are both critically acclaimed and a box office smash.

Their 2004 holiday tour was number seven in overall top grossing concerts and second in attendance according to industry trade Billboard Magazine, making TSO one of the top live concerts in the United States.

In a span of a few years, TSO has gone from playing medium-sized venues to the largest indoor arenas, even adding shows in many cities.

Through 2004, they had performed to 1.5 million people, from pre-teens to senior citizens, grossing more than $50 million.

It is anticipated that the ’05 season will surpass last year’s tour in ticket sales. With one dollar from every ticket going to local charities, and a projected attendance of over 650,000 people, TSO is expected to once again be giving over half a million dollars to charity.

The group has released three critically acclaimed albums, as well as a DVD/Video, "The Ghosts of Christmas Eve." Their 1996 debut release, "Christmas Eve and Other Stories," which remained at number one on the Top Catalog Chart for two consecutive weeks in 2004, is best known for producing the hit "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24." The work is still a staple at radio during the holiday season.

It has since been certified double platinum and is annually one of the Top 5 Holiday Records in the U.S. Two years later the band continued its success with another radio hit "Christmas Canon," which was showcased on the 1998 platinum-selling album, "The Christmas Attic."

In 2004 Trans-Siberian Orchestra released "The Lost Christmas Eve," which was certified gold in only five weeks. That CD offers a musical journey of loss and redemption.

It centers on a rundown hotel, an old toy store, a blues bar, a gothic cathedral and their respective inhabitants, whose destinies are intertwined during a single enchanted night in New York City.

O’Neill describes it as a story about Christmas and its ability to change endings. "If there’s anything in the past that you regret, hopefully this album will give you an excuse to go back and correct it. I think that’s what Christmas is about – it gives you an excuse to be kinder, to apologize for a past wrong, to do good," he suggests.

Each Christmas record, says Billboard, is annually a Top Ten best selling holiday record, as well as a Top Ten best selling catalog record in the U.S.

All of which has created considerable demand for TSO. That fact, and the relatively short Christmas season, led to the decision to go with two groups of musicians touring the country.

"It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in rock’n’roll, and I’ve been in it for more than 25 years," says O’Neill, who produced two live albums for Aerosmith, promoted every Madonna and Sting tour in Japan, was a guitarist in the Broadway production of "Hair" and was co-songwriter for the rock band Savatage.

"The quality has to be so high with a TSO concert. One TSO tour is complicated. A normal rock band has four or five musicians, or the bigger ones have eight members. We are touring with over 20 band members and singers in each company on stage."

O’Neill describes TSO as something of a hybrid: halfway between a rock group and a touring theatrical Broadway show.

"We like it better that way -- with the impact of all that instrumentation, the dynamics, a full rock band kicking in or going to a single piano. There are a lot of options. It gives the show different dynamics, and there’s the story factor which makes all the songs kick in."

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra was formed when O’Neill joined with producer-writer and Buffalo native Robert Kinkel and songwriter-singer-multi-instrumentalist Jon Oliva to create a modern format for classic Christmas music.

The concept first came to light in 1995 with the track, "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24," originally heard as a highlight of Savatage’s symphonic rock album, "Dead Winter Dead." The contemporary story was set amidst war in the former Yugoslavia.

With the enthusiastic response to the track, O’Neill, Kinkel and Oliva proceeded to interpret and expand on a number of traditional Christmas songs, including "The First Noel" and "O Come All Ye Faithful/O Holy Night."

Released in 1996 as part of its "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" album, the music, along with original compositions such as "This Christmas Day," "An Angel Came Down" and "Old City Bar," became the formal introduction to Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

"The Christmas Attic," the second part of the planned holiday trilogy, told the story of the Lord’s youngest angel and its Christmas encounter with a 14-year-old runaway.

TSO offered its first television special, "TSO: The Ghosts of Christmas Eve," an hour-long production featuring Jewel and Michael Crawford in 1999.

As for that "What’s in a name?" question, O’Neill replies, "That’s a complicated one."

The musicians had finished their first album and needed a name for the group. "It was really, really late at night and we were all really tired," he says. "I had been in Siberia in the ’80s and thought it was staggeringly beautiful and incredibly harsh and unforgiving. It blew me away. The only thing everybody had in common was the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In life, music is one thing everyone has in common, one thing everybody in the world knows."

O’Neill says the power of music is staggering. "You can cross just so many country and ethnic lines. It’s an amazing thing: a great song is a great song. They can cross bridges and divides," he says.

The holiday season has its own power says O’Neill, who considers himself very much a Christmas person. "From a very early age I learned that there is something about this day that causes people to act strange in a really good way. Both sides stopped fighting on Christmas day during wars. There is some kind of incredible magic on this day that seems to transcend time and location. We want to give the other guy a break on Christmas. It’s fascinating."

TSO is about an ideal, O’Neill explains. "It is doing whatever it takes to make the music great. We have no limitations. The line-up is fluid. Because of that we are able to bring in whatever voice or instrumentation we need."

The program features music from "Christmas Eve And Other Stories" performed in its entirety in the first half. "All the poetry read between the songs really works great," O’Neill says. "I was a little nervous about it the first year because it had not been done before. But it flows seamlessly. The stories are really easy to understand. They come off great.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and I saw ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ live."

In the second half, TSO can draw from highlights from their "The Christmas Attic," "Beethoven’s Last Night," their first non-holiday release, among other selections.

O’Neill is flying back and forth between various companies. "Each album takes about 100 musicians to create. In the past a lot of guys got left behind. That’s another reason why we decided to take all the musicians and singers working with us and put two separate groups touring the east and west coasts."

There are a lot of visuals. "We grew up in rock’n’roll. We bring a big light show," he says. "There is a lot of action on stage. In every city where we can the band comes out after the show and hangs out. We like to break the wall down between audience and band."

This is a good show for families too, he says. "To me great music crosses all generations and divides. There is a classical theatrical edge to TSO. The audience is incredibly mixed. There are kids in rock t-shirts and their parents and their parents.

"A lot of record companies are corporate-owned and corporations like to pigeonhole everything and say certain music is for certain age groups. But I think if you write music for the sake of trying to create great music everyone can find something they like.

"We just worry about the music and stories and try not to worry about whatever is popular at the moment, or whatever is the fad. We believe if you just care about the music everything else will come. You try to remember you are trying to create magic for people."

TSO is always looking to create as much magic and elicit as much emotional response as possible, he says. Since Sept. 11, he believes that is needed more than ever. "With Christmas there is a little extra edge. People are even a little more open to magic and being enchanted."

SIDEBAR:

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Robert Kinkel has worked with artists ranging from Aerosmith and the Who to the Police and Genesis.

The Buffalo native is the TSO’s co-writer/producer, keyboardist, orchestrator and musical director.

He has scored music for MTV, Nickelodeon, Al Franken’s "Why Not Me" (book on tape), and AT&T and Verizon.

He began piano lessons at 8, becoming active in music and theater.

Kinkel earned a B.A. in music and a minor in physics at Hamilton College. In 1978 he received a full scholarship to study solid state physics from Columbia University.

In 1981, he began working in the music industry, going to the Record Plant Studios in New York City to learn engineering and production.

In the early ’90s he began collaborating with Paul O’Neill and created and produced the hit "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)," which first appeared on the Savatage album "Dead Winter Dead."

The success of the song led to the creation of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Editor' Note: CPTV is showing a special on this band during the month of December. Check it out. It is an excellent special.