Nearly A Band Member
Posts: 891
Location: Dream Street | TSO basically is Savatage without Jon Oliva with a whle bunch of broadway musicians and session guys including Mark Wood. And the only reason Jon isn't performing, so he says, is that this way TSO can rightfully have it's own name. Jon was the creator of Savatage and many fans like to claim that this is just a rebirth of Savatage with a different name. But Jon sings on the album and writes a lot of the music. Paul O'neil brought Savatage to life in 1987 after they already had 4 albums and produced their last 8 albums. In 1996 Savatage released the album Dead Winter Dead with the track "Christmas Eve(Sarajevo 12/24)". WPLJ in NY played this song a lot during Christmas and the record company asked Paul to do a Xmas album. So he wrote a Xmas Trilogy and on the 1st of the 3 albums he included this cross over song. They also released 2 other non Christmas rock operas, Beethoven's Last Night and Night Castle. As each year passes they include more and more Savatage songs in their works and live performances. And many Savatage musicians are in TSO: Chris Caffery, Alex Skolnik, Al Pitrelli, Johnny Lee Middleton and Jeff Plate.
|