Photographs by Lee-Ann Richer.
It is Christmas time, which means only one thing. No, not that you get to eat lots, see family and get a few days off, it means that the annual shows of Trans-Siberian Orchestra rolls through town! Doing two shows in one day (a matinee 4pm and an evening 8pm) of their highly acclaimed live act, the band (orchestra?) played their Ghosts of Christmas show. The ability to have near sell out crowds for two shows at the Air Canada Centre is certainly a feat to be amazed at, something that you can attribute to their perfected live shows and their repeat customers who see them every year. The place buzzed as metal heads, families with young children and classy older couples with fur coats filed in. The theme of the bands last album was Letters From the Labyrinth, and they kept up the feeling at the show. An announcer introduced the band as their many large screens show the zooming into a castle lit by flickering lights. Once the lights had turned on, there was no stopping for the next two hours.
The band deftly weaves 80’s Hair Metal (Poison, Quiet Riot) with Classic Rock and Prog-like Opera’s (Rush, Yes, The Who) then filters it through its Christmas time machine and sprinkles Ludwig Van Beethoven over the whole package. Even though the weather looks like it will be in the double digits for Christmas this year, snow was rained down upon the audience sitting on the floor as lasers strobed over them creating a great effect making us actually wish it looked that way outside too.
The Ghosts of Christmas show is actually based on their PBS special that stars Ossie Davis as the Storyteller. A young runaway breaks into an abandoned theatre and falls asleep. You can’t tell if she is dreaming or not as the Storyteller helps show her the true meaning of Christmas and plays back memories from her past. For the live show Bryan Hicks played the part of the Storyteller telling bits of the tale in between songs as a small army of guitarists thrashed their way through mashed up Christmas songs. The music of Joy to the World turns into Good King Wenceslas while new lyrics are sung, still keeping the same themes. Even though the lyrics were mostly original and over covers of classic Christmas songs, the performance kept its overt religious themes present front and center, making no mistaking that the show is an extension of hymns sung in churches at this time albeit it synthesizers.
A few times throughout the night violinist Roddy Chong and quasi-front man Chris Caffery would run to the back of the audience and allow other parts of the audience to see them up close and personal. When they would do this a large pyramid of screens would rise up behind the soundboard and illuminate the back of the arena.
Everyone on stage wore similar outfits. The four guitarists all had long black military style tuxedo jackets; while the female backing singers all wore the same short black dresses with black tights on. The common theme between everyone on stage was that everyone had long shoulder length hair (some of the men had even longer hair to be fair). Even though it was like going to a GnR show as far as aesthetics, make no mistake that the level of costuming and choreography not to mention theatrics was finely tuned to perfection. After every epic guitar solo, or sustained falsetto hitting note sung the audience would roar with applause.
As the first half of the show concluded we learned the meaning of Christmas (“It’s never too late”), Caffery introduced all the main players on stage, including the string section backing the group up being Toronto’s own TSO aka the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for a fun TSO and TSO meet up. The second half of the show was a greatest hits compilation from the band’s numerous studio albums starting with their famous song Wizards of Winter, which had shooting flames from the numerous pyro guns and lasers that looked like the ones from The Climb music video (yes, that The Climb), only a lot more green and red. Even though I was sitting on the opposite end of the stage I could still feel my face get hot from the intensity of all the pyrotechnics. While Power Metal isn’t really my kind of music, it is impossible to not be impressed by the level of showmanship that goes with such an event. If you combined acts like Muse, U2 and Kanye West you would almost get to half the theatrics that TSO has in their shows.
The show ended with an encore performance of the bands most famous song Carol in the Bells, an epic instrumental that makes you bang your head with happiness. As dueling guitarists were hoisted over the audience on cranes, fire shot out of the back pyramid and Caffery and Chong ran through the crowd again making a sensory overload that is hard to forget. Even though it was my first TSO show, it is not hard to see why people keep coming back year after year.
Thanks to Live Nation Ontario for media access.
