The Trans-Siberian Orchestra could be considered a modern-day band of thieves.

Paul O’Neill, the orchestra’s co-founder, producer and primary composer and lyricist, made no bones about “stealing” from other artists during a recent hourlong phone interview with the Gazette from a tour stop in Sunrise, Fla.

According to him, the TSO’s larger-than-life show is based on Pink Floyd shows; the group’s album cover and tour artwork is handled by Greg Hildebrandt, the fantasy and science fiction artist known for creating the poster for the original “Star Wars” film in 1977; and the group’s rock opera lyrical style can be traced back to Oscar Wilde’s poetry.

All of those influences go into the orchestra’s annual Christmas tour, which O’Neill described as “the biggest rock production that has ever toured, period.” The show will head to the Times Union Center for its sixth consecutive year on Sunday.

“We try to build every concert, every album, like an old medieval castle,” O’Neill said. “It looks cool from a distance, and the closer you get, the cooler it looks, and the more you explore, the more there is to find.”

Holiday tradition

Since forming in 1996 around the hit “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12-24,” the TSO has become one of the biggest draws of the holiday concert season and an annual tradition here in the Capital Region. The orchestra’s mix of classic Christmas tunes performed with heavy metal guitars and symphonic strings, combined with the group’s penchant for rock-opera bombast, has managed to transcend its progressive hard rock trappings into the American mainstream.

The group has gotten so big that it splits in two for its tour, with one band tackling the East Coast and the other on the West Coast. This year’s tour, which began Nov. 1, will hit 90 cities for 140 shows before wrapping up Jan. 4 in Dayton, Ohio. Throughout the tour, the TSO will be playing two shows in many of the cities it visits, including the upcoming Times Union Center performances at 3 and 7:30 p.m.

The show is divided into two parts. A performance of TSO’s debut album, the holiday rock opera “Christmas Eve & Other Stories,” makes up the first set, while the second set focuses on songs from the orchestra’s other two Christmas albums, “The Christmas Attic” and “The Lost Christmas Eve,” the 2000 album “Beethoven’s Last Night” and the upcoming “Night Castle,” due for release next summer.

“Christmas Eve & Other Stories” follows the story of an angel sent to Earth who finds the true meaning of Christmas in a bar on Christmas Eve. In addition to the scripted story, the show features an ever-present laser light show, smoke machines running at full-tilt and a giant custom trussing system with moving lights, a first for this year.

Moving and morphing

“It looks like an Erector set, with lights moving, changing color, firing in time to the music,” O’Neill said. “Every truss is on an individual motor, and it moves and morphs throughout the entire show to the music, which has never been done before.”

And of course, what rock show would be complete without explosions? “We spend $2 million every four weeks on just explosives,” he said.

According to O’Neill, the show will be twice as big as last year’s, despite concerns over the weakening economy, which led to pressure from higher ups to scale back the show. He also insisted on keeping ticket prices within the $30 to $50 range, explaining that “we can absorb the hit better than the average family.”

“We don’t want anyone to say, ‘Can we afford to see TSO, or should we see Grandma?’ ” he said.

O’Neill, a guitarist and hard rock producer who has worked with artists such as Aerosmith (“Classics Live I and II”), originally formed the TSO with John Oliva and Robert Kinkel, members of the ’80s progressive metal band Savatage. His original plan for the orchestra was to release six rock operas, and he found himself gravitating toward the Christmas theme.

“When doing the stories, the TSO rock operas had to be bigger than life, since we have four lead guitarists and 24 lead singers,” he said. “I was influenced by [Charles] Dickens; his subjects were larger than life, the Industrial Revolution, and he wrote five books about Christmas. Why five books? Christmas is too large a subject to take on in one book, and it’s too large for one album.”

The three Christmas albums the TSO has released make up the group’s Christmas trilogy. The inspiration originally came from an incident O’Neill witnessed on Christmas Eve in New York City when he was 7 years old, walking home with a friend.

“We hear the squealing of brakes, and two cabs run into each other,” he said. “The drivers step out; one looks like a shaman, one looks like he’s from another country. The first driver says, ‘It’s completely my fault, let me give you the money.’ The second driver looks at the damage and says, ‘You know something, I could have got this in any parking lot.’ The next thing you know, they’re looking at pictures of their kids. Any other day in the week, there’d be blood on the street, but something about Christmas Eve makes people treat strangers differently.”

The TSO’s next album, the long in-the-works “Night Castle,” will be only the second nonholiday themed album the group has released. The record is shaping up to be a double album, which like the group’s concerts, is divided into one-half rock opera, one-half regular album.

“I would rather have the album done to the best of our ability than be on time, with me thinking, ‘Aw, we could have made that song better, there could have been a better illustration’,” O’Neill said. “The bands we worshipped growing up — The Who, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Queen — all had over-the-top production.”