Alan Sculley at Kitspa A&E; recently spoke with TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA co-founder Paul O'Neill. An excerpt from the story appears below:

Paul O'Neill, founder of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, got the memo about the economy and looming recession. But he obviously didn't care what it said.

He gleefully reports that this year's edition of TSO's holiday tour features double the stage production of last year, an expanded band, orchestra and choir and a weekly expense of a half million dollars for pyrotechnics and special effects alone.

And, by the way, O'Neill hasn't raised ticket prices, which generally range from $20 to $50.

"In the beginning, some of our agents were like 'Now Paul, because of what is going on the economy, you probably should scale down,'" O'Neill said in a mid-October phone interview. 'Scale down? I'm doubling the thing.' (Agents asked) 'How much are we going to have to raise the ticket prices?' (I'm like) 'Ticket prices go up nowhere.'"

O'Neill didn't stop there. He had TSO's accountants find out which cities had been hit hardest by the economic downturn and arranged for special early bird ticket pricing in those markets.

"In some cities you can do family four packs at $25 a clip, per ticket, and in cities that were hit the worst, you can pick up tickets for the first two weeks at $20 a clip," O'Neill said. "So if you have a family of five, for a hundred bucks they can get three hours of the biggest rock show in the world right now, no exceptions, not even close."

O'Neill isn't blowing smoke (or lasers or flashpots) when he talks about TSO being in its own league when it comes to a visual production he refers to as "Pink Floyd on steroids."

"It was killing when we were designing it on paper, but seeing it in real life, it's so realistic," O'Neill said of this year's TSO stage set.

"I think over the main stage alone I think we're hanging 136,000 pounds of lights," he said. "The trussing system will be morphing and moving throughout the entire show. So you're talking like the biggest lighting rig ever that constantly keeps shape shifting like a transformer and we've arranged it so that at times the rigging lowers itself to the stage and the band members can get on it and they can run around, move around on the trussing while the show is moving on.

"In other words, we're not talking about hanging from a rope," he continued. "We're talking like the trusses come down, the band gets on, the trusses go back up into the air, and it's just never been done before. We're just trying to still stay cutting edge, cutting edge, cutting edge."

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