TSO - Simply Amazing! by MICHAEL A. BECK
(Tour Guide Journal Vol. 9 Issue 12, 2006)

If you've never seen or heard much about the Trans-Siberian Orchestra before, you really don't know what to expect when going into the show. So let's get that out of the way straight away. The name has little to do with the content of the show in that this is not a touring Russian symphony that does Christmas music. It is a Christmas rock opera that is the brainchild of New York City songwriter Paul O'Neill. O'Neill developed the idea in 1996 and approached long time friends and collaborators Robert Kinkel, Al Pitrelli and Jon Oliva to form the core of the writing team.

The show had some pretty interesting challenges right out of the gate. First of all, it was a Christmas show, which means it had a minimum amount of time to make a maximum effect on the U.S. market. The solution was to tour two identical shows simultaneously. The overall touring aspect of the project was managed by Tour Director Elliot Saltzman. Saltzman was also deeply involved in the design with Lighting Designer Bryan Hartley. "It's my job to take Paul's vision and turn it into reality on the stage," explains Saltzman. "For example when we started selling beyond the 190 degree mark, Paul didn't like it because he thought that the people on the side of the stage wouldn't get the same show that the people out front would."

The answer he came up with was to extend the stage on either side thus getting the musicians out closer to the side audience. While O'Neill was right in that those people didn't have the same look at the show that the people out front get, they did get a much closer look which made the experience of the show different, but no less spectacular.

The show's lighting system is supplied by Q1 Production Technologies, who have been on the last six TSO tours. Q1's Craig Redden works closely with Hartley and Saltzman from the earliest planning stages of each year's tour and says it is a thrill and a pleasure to bring their ever-growing vision to life. Hartley says simply that Q1 has been "awesome," adding that Redden is a very important part of the process. "Every year he comes to the table with all the right bits and pieces and does whatever it takes to make it all work for us."

This year, the main lighting system over the stage consisted of nine trusses that ran up and down stage. The odd numbered sticks articulated at the center via specially made articulating corner pieces, which were created by Thomas Engineering. This allowed the truss to assume the rough shape of a hockey stick. In the event of lateral movement, the corners were fitted with sway bars to keep it as solid as possible.



Those trusses had some other interesting made to order hardware on them as well. At the far upstage end of each truss and just down stage of the articulation point was what was called par pods. These were 16 pars arrayed in bars of four instruments. The top bar was ACL's and the rest were par 64's. The pods were designed, as were all of the add-on pieces for the system, by Q1's (West Coast Tour) lighting crew chief John Lunio. "We needed something that was going to have the look of pars that were individually mounted but could mount and travel easily and this is what we came up with."

In addition to the par pods, there were the widgets that were designed to hold outboard mounted Martin Mac 2k's in order to accommodate the design specs of the rig. Hartley explained, "They kept coming to me asking if the lights could travel inside the truss and I stuck to my guns and said not only that I needed them to be outside of the truss, but that they had to hang straight down all the time. So John Lunio came up with that design for those hangers." They were basically "L" shaped brackets that actually traveled on the fixtures. The light mounted on a sleeve that fit over the horizontal arm of the bracket while the vertical arm attached to the outside of the truss. The sleeve was pinned in position for traveling and unpinned so that when the truss tilted, the lights would always hang in a downward position. There were four of these attachments on each side of the odd numbered sticks just upstage of the hinge.

On the end of the odd numbered trusses was the increasingly ubiquitous Syncrolite 5K B-52, serving a number of purposes during the show. But as specials, they hit like a hammer. The effect was genuinely spectacular. This created the need for a cap to be mounted on the end of the truss with its own "L" bracket that could hold the weight of the beefy fixture.

All of the trussing for the show was aluminum as were the par cans with the exception of the Source Four truss warmers. Where silver truss (and pars) that are lit with truss warmers can tend to draw attention away from the performers on stage, that was not the case in this show. Both Saltzman and Hartley addressed that issue. "When we first came out of the theatres and into the arenas, there was a concern that we weren't going to be able to keep the audience as captivated as they were in the smaller rooms. So we decided to have the stuff in the air to keep the show closer to the people. It was the same thing as with the condos that we built to get the show closer to the crowd on the sides."

This was also coupled with the strong desire of Paul O'Neill for the show to be an overall environmental experience wherein the visual aspect of the show carries as much weight as do the performers on stage.



Hartley added to that, "I had to sell Lenny Kravitz on the whole silver truss thing too. But with the star drop as the background, it really does go away." Indeed it did. The star drop allowed the light rig to pull the perfect disappearing act, which gave it all the more dramatic effect when it came up in the show. The other added result was that the lighting that was used in the system during the time when the star drop was utilized but the warmers weren't, seemed to come out of nowhere. However, when the system was lit, it was not just lit from the inside with the truss toners. It was also lit from the outside, sometimes with slow moving gobos, which allowed it to take on the appearance of set pieces.

The even numbered trusses had internal mounted VL- 2k's and four banks of ACL's in a square configuration. The trusses themselves were lined on each bottom cord with a run of Versa Tube that was used in the most original use of the product that this writer has seen yet. The entire system was well peppered with 3k Atomic Strobes and Color Kinetics Color Blaster LED units that were used as crowd burners.

There were other accommodations that added to the experience of the show for audience members who weren't in what is commonly considered the "best seats in the house." Among these additional accommodations were two square shapes that flew side by side over the audience. Each side of the square had three square banks of ACL'S that aimed straight down into the crowd. This not only gave the people on the floor visual involvement in the show, but also gave a greater sense of spectacle to those in the peripheral seating around the room.



On the inside of each square was a circular truss shape with a screen stretched across it. That truss was ringed with Vari-Lite VL-3k's that played on the screens as well as offering audience lighting. The screens were also hit with floor-mounted units from the stage. As was all of the truss in the show, the shapes that lived out over the audience were lit with Source Four pars mounted with CromaCue color changers.

One 15 watt, water-cooled full color mixed gas laser unit and four YAG units provided by Laser Design augmented the lighting of the show, which shot from five positions along the back line and did some very impressive work. In the back of the room were two scissor lifts. One was a platform upon which two band members performed as it rose to its highest elevation toward the end of the show. As it did so, dense columns of smoke were emitted from the bottom out of six cryo-jet heads and lit in various colors by the fore mentioned Color Blasters.

The other scissor lift was a pyro platform that had one propane nozzle on each corner that was used during a big pyro gag that also took place on the stage at the same time. There was also a star shower display, star burst and two different flame gags that used both red and green flames. Throughout the entire show the stage was covered with low-lying fog created by four LSG (low smoke generator) units.

With all of this talk of visual effects, it could be easy to forget that there is an audio rig on this tour. The audio team on this production is doing a real tight wire act. Because the show sells to a demographic of 7 to 70, it has to be able to deliver a huge heavy metal rock presentation without killing the ears of the grandparents and young grandchildren who are there to see a Christmas show.



The first thing that someone who understands audio noticed on this tour was the fact that there was no line array. FOH tech, Brian Duffy explained, "Because of how far around the stage we are selling, in order for us to get that much coverage, we would have had to hang another array for side fill. That would cause a sight line problem. So we decided to go with a more traditional system that was a much wider wrap-around system that gave us much smoother coverage throughout the whole studio gives me a great advantage in that I know just what I'm looking for out here."

There was another interesting twist in the audio aspect of this tour. The monitor engineers on the tour (Tony Luna, east and Stewart Wilson, west) were responsible for securing the wireless frequencies for the room. As technology improves and new wireless gear shows up on the market, the spectrum of wireless frequencies shrinks. This issue is compounded by the fact that the U.S. and British governments are auctioning off frequencies to the highest bidders. Add to that the number of broadcast frequencies that could be flying around, and it could make for a very long day for the person who has this job.

This task was handled through the use of a new software package called Intermodulation Analysis System (IAS), which is the product of Professional Wireless Systems, a subsidiary of Masque Sound. While it has only been recently released to the public, IAS is actually version 4. However, TSO is the first show to use IAS on tour and Tony Luna, who gave TGJ a run through on it, was very happy. "Ižve been using this software since the tour started and I haven't had a single hitch." He goes on to explain, "I'm getting really good RF reception everywhere. I've got singers that go out to the front of house to perform and I haven't had any problems there."

In a nut shell, here's how it works. The operator enters a zip code into the program and it tells you a list of television stations within a given radius. The operator then double checks to make sure that nothing has been left out. Once that picture has been taken, the operator then tells the software what make and models of RF that are being used and it tells you what frequencies you can use in that area. As the list of frequencies is being compiled, the program IAS is knocking out the frequencies that might compete with anything in the area.

Everywhere you looked on this tour, you came away more and more impressed. What may be the most impressive part of the whole story is that it only traveled in eight trucks. It had to. As was said in the beginning of this story, the fact that it is a Christmas rock opera, it can't start much before November. For that reason, it has to run in two separate troops (eight trucks each). There is an even greater challenge than that. It was not uncommon for each troop to do seven shows in five days because of the large number of matinees that occurred on the tour. Matinees call for a 6:00 am load in and often take place in the middle of a multi-city run.

No matter who we talked to, there were two questions that got the very same answer. Q: What was the biggest challenge of the tour? A: The schedule. Q: What is the thing that keeps you coming back to such a meat-grinder? A: The challenge of the schedule and the great treatment that we receive for rising to that challenge. Elliot Saltzman is quick to stress the importance of the treatment of a crew that he is very proud of. When asked what he brags to his friends about when the tour is over, his answer came swift and easy. "I brag about the fact that the quality of life on this tour is unlike most tours. Everybody out here is taken care of. It's hard work out here and it really says a lot that everyone out here really wants to be here. No one does backto- back matinees loading out at two in the morning and loading back in at six the next morning. And that's what we do out here. These people have a great sense of pride in this show and that is just part of what I brag about." There is no question that one of the more dangerous places on Earth is between this man and his crew.

At the end of the two-month run, this is one tired crew. For most of the crew the better part of the year is spent on other tours and/or projects. But TSO is always in the back of their minds. It changes in a big way every year just as the audience base grows every year.

The pictures tell a lot more of the story than the text of this article. This show packed as much visual punch as did any of the largest shows TGJ has seen this year. In the end sitting back and watching the show as a member of the audience, it gave the effect of a massage of the senses that was so deep and hard as to take one to the very edge of pain, stopping just in time to leave the recipient drained and anxious for the next session.

In every way this show was simply amazing!

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