Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO[5]) is an American rock band founded in 1996 by producer, composer, and lyricist Paul O'Neill, who brought together Jon Oliva and Al Pitrelli (both members of Savatage) and keyboardist and co-producer Robert Kinkel to form the core of the creative team. The band gained in popularity when they began touring in 1999 after completing their second album, The Christmas Attic, the year previous. In 2007, the Washington Post referred to them as "an arena-rock juggernaut" and described their music as "Pink Floyd meets Yes and the Who at Radio City Music Hall."[6] TSO has sold more than 10 million concert tickets and over 10 million albums.[5][7] The band has released a series of rock operas: Christmas Eve and Other Stories, The Christmas Attic, Beethoven's Last Night, The Lost Christmas Eve, their two-disc Night Castle and Letters From the Labyrinth.[5] Trans-Siberian Orchestra is also known for their extensive charity work and elaborate concerts, which include a string section, a light show, lasers, moving trusses, video screens, and effects synchronized to music.[3]
Major Rock Movie 1999
Both Billboard Magazine and Pollstar have ranked them as one of the top twenty-five ticket-selling bands in the first decade of the new millennium.[8][9] Their path to success was unusual in that, according to O'Neill, TSO is the first major rock band to go straight to theaters and arenas, having never played at a club, never having an opening act and never being an opening act.[10]
Their debut album, the first installment of the intended Christmas Trilogy, was a rock opera called Christmas Eve and Other Stories, and was released in 1996.[12] It remains among their best-selling albums. It contains the instrumental "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" which originally appeared on Savatage's rock opera, Dead Winter Dead, a story about the Bosnian War. Their 1998 release The Christmas Attic, the sequel to Christmas Eve and Other Stories followed a similar format. This album produced the hit "Christmas Canon", a take on Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D major with lyrics and new melodies added.The Christmas Attic was first performed live in 2014.
Her first solo exhibition of her rock music pictures was from June to August 1997 at the SoHo Triad Fine Arts Gallery in New York City. Her second show was from April to May 1998 at the Gomez Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, and her third exhibition was from February to May 1999 in the corporate headquarters gallery of the music television cable channel VH1 Music First in the Viacom Building in NYC. A selection of her work hangs in Hard Rock Cafes in NYC, St. Louis and Rome, Italy; in July 2000 her photograph of Tina Turner and Janis Joplin singing together was given as a gift to President Clinton and displayed in the Music Room at the White House. It is also in the private collections of Lenny Kravitz, Tommy Hilfiger, Dr. Jonathan Samet and many others. Eleven of her pictures are featured in the permanent collection of the Pop Music Museum in Seattle, WA. Her work is seen frequently on covers and in the booklets of compact disc reissues by Sony Music, Columbia, Grateful Dead Merchandising, Rhino and other record labels and in magazines like Mojo, Rolling Stone, and Classic Rock. Previously with Soho Triad Fine Arts Gallery in New York, Govinda Gallery, Washington, D.C., Gomez Gallery, Baltimore, MD, David Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Michele Mosko Fine Art in Denver, CO, all now closed, and Staley-Wise Gallery and Bonni Benrubi Gallery, both in NYC, since 2014 she is represented by the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York and Los Angeles, as well as the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, NM, Heart of Gold in Charleston, SC, Goya in Baltimore, MD and Snap Galleries in the UK.
Class of 1999 is a rare instance where a low budget seems not to be a hindrance to the production value. This eccentric spectacle is irresistible and holds up very well nearly 30 years after its initial release. A blu-ray restoration can sometimes accentuate dated effects, cheap makeup, or sloppy mistakes that could more easily be hidden with a VHS format. Luckily, Class of 1999 manages to look amazing with its updated format while still maintaining a grittiness we all love in exploitation films. Class of 1999 is a fun, fast-paced, outlandish, punk rock good time that is certainly worth a revisit.
Precursors to the 1991 EruptionsOn July 16, 1990, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake (comparable in size to the great 1906 San Francisco, California, earthquake) struck about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Mount Pinatubo on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, shaking and squeezing the Earth's crust beneath the volcano. At Mount Pinatubo, this major earthquake caused a landslide, some local earthquakes, and a short-lived increase in steam emissions from a preexisting geothermal area, but otherwise the volcano seemed to be continuing its 500-year-old slumber undisturbed. In March and April 1991, however, molten rock (magma) rising toward the surface from more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) beneath Pinatubo triggered small earthquakes and caused powerful steam explosions that blasted three craters on the north flank of the volcano. Thousands of small earthquakes occurred beneath Pinatubo through April, May, and early June, and many thousand tons of noxious sulfur dioxide gas were also emitted by the volcano.
As the headlining artist, Chuck Berry's rock 'n' roll performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "School Days" at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival was a major clash with the festival's jazz genre. His set was filmed in Bert Stern's documentary, "Jazz on a Summer's Day."
It was the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival that was a major turning point for rock 'n' roll in the 1960s. The lineup included The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and The Who, but it was Jimi Hendrix whose groundbreaking performance made rock 'n' roll history when he set his guitar on fire and smashed it to pieces on stage.
"Coldplay has grasped, perhaps more than any other major rock band, the importance of collaboration in the contemporary pop music landscape," said Theo Cateforis, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Fine Arts and Associate Music Professor for Syracuse University's College of Arts & Sciences.
Despite the disarray in progressive circles resulting from Clintonite centrism in the 1990s, two major film stars, thanks to their ability to leverage financing for major film projects, gave movie audiences an opportunity to critique a social system that was seemingly stable. Set, respectively, in the 1990s and in the 1930s, Warren Beatty's 1998 film Bulworth and Tim Robbins's 1999 film Cradle Will Rock grappled with the dilemma of how one can both survive within an unjust social order and perhaps even transcend it. Each film focuses on the preservation of individual dignity and either explicitly or implicitly contributes to the strengthening of collective struggle against late capitalism. As well-financed feature films appealing to a mass audience Bulworth and Cradle Will Rock provide critiques of elite capitalists and the capitalist system and offer sustenance and support for the idea that "another world is possible." (1) 2ff7e9595c
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