I had the opportunity to attend a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert last night, the first time for me. From the energy of the crowd, it seemed most of those in attendance had been before. What I expected was a few Christmas songs in the mixed heavy metal style they are known so well for and a neat light show. What we got was a ton of music, not exclusive to only Christmas, and the fanciest light show I think I have ever seen (and I say this after purchasing the Pulse DVD by Pink Floyd). In every sense of the word apart from literally, they blew the doors off the venue. Fireworks, ten foot-tall jets of orange and green flame, and crazy awesome lasers were all prominently featured in full glory.

Also impressive is how personable they are. One of the founding members of the group, whose name escapes me at this moment, actually said it was their greatest selling concert of the tour so far, and that everyone was invited to the after party to hang out (which, with a near sold-out audience, is not an insignificant number of people). Someone was also a guest on the local radio station to donate an $8000+ keyboard and tour jacket to a local charity project the station is putting on, and they presented a check for over twelve thousand dollars to the food bank just before the show started. As if that wasn’t enough, a dollar from every ticket sold went to another local charity. That was really quite something.

At any rate, it was fantastic—hands-down one of the finest concerts I have ever seen.