Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve and other stories 1996

Christmas Eve and Other Stories is the debut album by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

It was released on October 15, 1996, and is the first album in their "Christmas trilogy", with The Christmas Attic (1998) and The Lost Christmas Eve (2004) coming after it. All three albums, as well as their The Ghosts of Christmas Eve DVD, were featured in the The Christmas Trilogy box set.

The story is about a young man who wanders into a bar on Christmas Eve where he encounters a mysterious old man who tells him a tale about the magical effect of Christmas Day on the human race. The album takes familiar classical pieces and adds to them new songs and arrangements from both classic and progressive rock influences for which the group is known. The album also contains a mix of vocal and instrumental songs. The primary musicians on the album are all members of the progressive metal band Savatage (Paul O'Neill, the producer of the album, is Savatage's longtime producer). Jon Oliva, one of the principal songwriters on the album, is also a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and original vocalist in Savatage. (Oliva is also the voice of Mephistopheles on Beethoven's Last Night.) Cover art created by Edgar Jerins.

As of November 2014, Christmas Eve and Other Stories was the ninth best-selling Christmas/holiday album in the United States during the Nielsen SoundScan era of music sales tracking (1991 – present), with sales of 3,430,000 copies according to SoundScan.

On November 28, 2011, Christmas Eve and Other Stories was certified Triple Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipment of three million copies in the United States.


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