Wednesday evening at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Trans-Siberian Orchestra will close out a month’s worth of rehearsals with the first show of its 2024 tour that will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its rock opera “The Last Christmas Eve.” Arguably the biggest ongoing holiday touring production of the past 25 years, TSO also will be celebrating two milestones with the tour that begins, as it does every year, in the Council Bluffs arena where the orchestra gathers and rehearses, starting in late October. Those milestones: 20 million tickets sold and more than $20 million in donations to charity, numbers that would seem to be impossible for a show that tours for just two months of the year.
But TSO has a secret weapon (or two rather) it uses to pull that off. “Most people don't realize we have two different touring groups,” said TSO music director and lead guitarist Al Pitrelli. “There's a West Coast and East Coast group.
So when you look at that schedule, it’s literally impossible for one band to cover all that. People are also reading..
. “We've been doing this with two bands ever since the year 2000, but we play to roughly 1 million people a year between the two groups. Along with that, is the charity, the dollar per ticket.
” The two groups rehearse in the Mid-America Center at the same time, one stage set at each end of the arena floor, as the cast and crew put together the lavish production that brings a rock show, complete with pyrote.
