Trans-Siberian Orchestra is back again, but with new material

Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “highly anticipated” next album, “Night Castle,” hit stores Oct. 27. And when an album is “highly anticipated,” that usually means that fans, reporters and the executives of your record company have been asking about it for a very long time.

“It was supposed to come out in July 2005. Obviously, I’ve missed that deadline,” said Trans-Siberian Orchestra creator Paul O’Neill by telephone from Omaha, Neb. “I’m always in awe of writers because occasionally I’ll pick up a newspaper and see a story that is brilliantly written and it’s like, ‘Son of a (expletive). This person wrote this in six hours, because it only happened eight hours ago.’ But I’m always tinkering. I just don’t want to let the fans down. And the later it gets, the more pressure to make it perfect.”

Trans-Siberian Orchestra performs in Peoria on Nov. 7. While a full-scale production of “Night Castle” is not yet being performed, the Peoria show will include songs from the new album. The production includes material from “Christmas Eve and Other Stories” in the first half and “Beethoven’s Night” in the second half.

“Night Castle” is O’Neill’s second non-Christmas rock opera since the release of “Beethoven’s Last Night” in 2000. (Other albums include 1996’s “Christmas Eve and Other Stories,” 1998’s “The Christmas Attic,” 2001’s “The Ghosts of Christmas Eve” and 2004’s “The Lost Christmas Eve.”)

The word on the street is that “Night Castle” is the story of a U.S. Army special forces officer and his journey to fight during the Khmer Rouge period of 1970s Cambodia. O’Neill won’t share details of the plot.

“I want people to find it out for themselves,” he says. “Saying ‘Night Castle’ is about Cambodia, that’s like saying ‘Ben Hur’ was about boats.

“Cambodia’s in it, but so is medieval Europe. So is 42nd Street, Manhattan. It’s about how human beings make the same mistakes over and over again. And somehow, in the end, good always overcomes. I felt the album was so appropriate these days, there’s a lot going on on Wall Street, people are feeling hopeless. But what happened in Cambodia is hard to comprehend. They killed three million men, women and children.”

The decision to stray from the Christmas theme wasn’t because O’Neill, 55, felt he had said enough about the holiday. Rather, there are other topics he wants to explore.

“For the immediate future, the Christmas rock operas are all completed,” O’Neill said. “It is an intimidating subject. If you write a book, a movie, a song about Christmas, you’re competing with material from the last 1,000 years. You do a movie, you’re competing with Frank Capra. You write a book, you’re competing with Dickens. Any generation will (pass forward) only the best. So it intimidated me the most.”

O’Neill said he’s considering creating a rock opera about the Bolshevik Revolution next. Just don’t ask him about the release date. He is, after all, something of a perfectionist — one with the goal of making the greatest art possible.

 “The job of art is to trigger an emotion in human beings,” he said. “Bad art triggers no emotion — it’s the song in the mall that is just background noise, a painting on the wall that is like blank wall paper. Good art will make you feel an emotion you’ve never felt before. But great art needs no explanation, it just takes your breath away.”

Danielle Hatch can be reached at dhatch@pjstar.com.

If you go

What: Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
When: 3 and 8 p.m. Nov. 7
Where: Civic Center arena.
Tickets: $28, $39.50, $49.50 and $59.50 at the Peoria Civic Center Box Office, all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at (800) 745-3000 and online at Ticketmaster.com. Additional fees may apply.