Picture by Lewis Lee

Sean Piccoli at South Florida's Sun-Sentinel.com has fileda report on the TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA. An excerpt from the piece appears below:

Trans-Siberian Orchestra Swirls Dickens, Judas Priest, Then Sets It On Fire

How big is the touring holiday package known as Trans-Siberian Orchestra? Founder Paul O'Neill says his production spends "a million dollars every two weeks just on explosives."

Christmas might not be the season for blowing things up, but Christmas in North America is becoming increasingly synonymous with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. And "pyro" — the concert trade's term for fireworks and explosions — plays a major role in O'Neill's yuletide rock-opera spectacle.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra also comes with a rock band, symphonic musicians, multiple singers and enough high-tech audiovisual muscle to pound home the wintry concept. The show visits BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise on Thursday as part of a two-month continental sweep by a pair of TSO companies. By early January the tour, which began Nov. 1 in Iowa, is scheduled to hit almost 100 cities.

The set draws from four storytelling CDs, three of them Christmas-themed. Anyone missing the concert can watch a DVD version called The Ghosts of Christmas Eve, which also airs on PBS stations during pledge drives. Radio completes the media circuit every year by dusting off Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24, TSO's metal mash-up of Carol of the Bells and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

These are not quiet odes to that most wonderful time of the year. The CDs, concerts and television special add up to a kind of holiday smackdown. O'Neill's Christmas punch combines Charles Dickens, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Mannheim Steamroller with a dose of Judas Priest. It's Christmas signaled with a heraldic blast.

Go to this location for the complete story.