A Newtown Voice Joins The Big Sound Of TSO

 

By Shannon Hicks

Six years after graduating from Newtown High School, Heather Gunn is on the road with one of the world’s most popular touring groups, singing to crowds that average between 8,000 and 10,000 people each night.

Heather is a backup singer with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which will be in Connecticut for the second time in just over a month when its buses pull into Hartford on December 16 for a show that night at Hartford Civic Center. The group was at Mohegan Sun Arena on November 25.

For the uninitiated, TSO is a rock orchestra that was founded in 1996 in New York City by composers Paul O’Neill and Robert Kinkel, with lead singer Jon Oliva from the band Savatage. TSO released its first album that year, called Christmas Eve and Other Stories, and has since become known as a rock band that plays Christmas music (primarily Christmas music, although in 2000 the group released its first, and so far only, non-Christmas album, Beethoven’s Last Night).

This music and its live performances have appealed to all ages, and concerts have been so well received that the group regularly ranks among the top grossing concert tours annually.

In the recording studio, Trans-Siberian Orchestra uses a full 60-piece orchestra and a choir. As of 2004, the touring band included 14 vocalists, 14 musicians, and two narrators. On the road, each show features one narrator, 12 musicians (including six string performers who are hired locally in each city) and eight singers.

For those who know of TSO, to hear that an NHS Class of ’99 graduate is now a member of its East Coast touring company is certainly something of which to be proud.

This year the group is touring to support its latest release, The Lost Christmas Eve, and Heather has moved from a “swing” position — a singer who fills in for regular singers on either tour — to a backup singer for TSO East Coast. In the course of 7½ weeks, the East Coast company will visit 17 states (including two stops in Connecticut), stopping in 39 cities and performing 51 shows.

During the stretch from November 9, the first date of the current tour, and December 30, the final show, there are only nine nights when performances are not scheduled.

When Ms Gunn called The Newtown Bee last week, it was midmorning and she was just waking up, which has become her routine since the TSO Winter Tour 2005 started last month. She was in Charleston, W.V.; during the previous hours while she and her fellow TSO musicians, performers and crew members slept, they had been bused 390 miles.

The previous night TSO had performed in Hampton, Va. Shows typically last about three hours, which means the performers do not leave the stage until nearly midnight.

“It’s a very intense show,” said Ms Gunn. “It’s a very big show. Think Phantom of the Opera meets The Who with a Pink Floyd light show.

“The audiences are great. Every audience differs, of course,” she added. “You get an audience with a lot of energy, and it’s crazy. You get people holding signs, and screaming. On the most part people have really good energy.”

Ms Gunn said that demographics affect the shows. Arena shows tend to draw devoted fans — the folks who show up with signs and hope to get autographs — while many of the shows in casinos can include older audience members and people who are not necessarily big fans of the band, but are visiting the casino and want to check out a show.

Every TSO show is followed by a meet-and-greet, where anyone who wants to meet some of the TSO performers is able to stand in line for autographs and photos.

The meet-and-greets typically run 90 minutes to two hours, which means the performers are still working until 12:30 or 1 in the morning. Then there is after-show food that has been prepared by the caterer who travels with the tour, and by the time the performers hang out long enough to decompress and feel tired it is already 2:30 or 3 in the morning. So to have Ms Gunn call at 10:30 in the morning and say that she is just waking up is not much of a surprise.

Waking up is followed by breakfast and hot tea, a workout, shower, and time on the computer. Sometimes she watches some TV; last week she was working on writing some Christmas cards.

Much of her free time is spent on her computer. Most of the buses that TSO uses on tour are set up for computer use; Ms Gunn is on a bus that has wi-fi accessibility.

“I’m doing a lot of journaling, trying to keep my family, friends, and clients in the loop of what’s going on,” she said. Ms Gunn and her husband, Wil Rivera, are the owners and operators of a personal training facility in Manhattan. “Also, when I get back home I won’t have to be trying to recall this. I’ll have a complete record already.

“These buses are really comfortable,” Ms Gunn continued. “Each one has a front lounge with leather couches, two plasma TVs, a whole kitchen, loveseat, full Sub-Zero refrigerator and a bathroom, and that’s all in the front of the bus. There is a door that divides the privacy area, which is where the sleeping bunks are.

“The bunk areas then have their own DVD players, screens, and computer access. Each of these buses sleeps 12 people, but TSO gets enough buses so that we can sleep just six to a bus, which is nice because it gives us a little more room.”

The performers have a hectic evening schedule, but they have down time during the day. Dinner is usually served between 4:30 and 7:30. On show nights (which is nearly every night between November 9 and December 30), soundchecks and vocal warmups on for the backup singers are at 5, then dinner is from 5:30 until 6, and then the singers head to the dressing room.

“After dinner we have a lot of down time, to be honest,” said Ms Gunn. “We don’t even start getting ready until the show starts, because we don’t even appear for an hour into the show. The first hour is all music, no singing.”

The Road To TSO

How she went from being personal trainer and dancer living in New York City to a backing singer with Trans-Siberian Orchestra is, says Heather, a story that parallels how everything happens in her life.

“It was kind of abstract random,” Ms Gunn said.

Ms Gunn has already been a nanny to nine children and the executive assistant to the president of Berliner Insurance.

Of course, like many looking to break into the performance world, she has also served her time as a waitress.

After high school in Newtown, Ms Gunn attended and graduated from The American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Then she pursued her BFA at New School University in New York City.

She has always been very active, particularly enjoying basketball (she has been a national AAU basketball and soccer player), skiing, and dance. She then began to develop her skills as a personal trainer and a group fitness instructor while working at New York Sports Clubs in Manhattan for a few years.

Then she and her then-boyfriend, Wil Rivera, opened their own personal training and fitness company, called Grass Roots Fitness Project.

She was also dancing with a dance team called Adrenaline. Her choreographer, Johnny P, was also a teacher at Reebok. One of TSO’s casting scouts works out at Reebok, and was taking one of Johnny P’s classes.

When the scout, Dina Sanai, mentioned to Johnny P that she was looking for a new female vocalist for the tour and had not been having any luck finding anyone they liked, Johnny P gave Ms Gunn’s name and contact information to Ms Sanai.

“He then called me to tell me what he had done and all about this band, one of the top five for touring revenue in the world,” Ms Gunn recalled. “He got me all freaked out about it, to be honest.”

Ms Gunn, who had not been on an audition for nearly three years at that point, almost skipped out on her audition opportunity.

“But I didn’t,” she said. “I went in and sang for them, and they loved it. They sent my tape to Paul O’Neill and Bob Kinkel. [Bob] flew in and listened to me, and last year they hired me as a backup for the backup band.”

For the 2004 tour, Ms Gunn rehearsed in New York and when anyone went down for sickness in either tour, she was flown out to fill in for them.

“I was swinging back and forth,” she said. “I had to learn a lot last year, but it was great for me. It helped me prepare for this year.”

Ms Gunn went back for an audition this year, and was invited to go on the tour as an official backing vocalist.

The excitement of that opportunity was coupled with a little bit of sadness, however. Ms Gunn and Wil Rivera were married in September.

“It was very hard to say good-bye to my husband for two months,” she said. “We were married in September and had been living together for four years, and had only been apart for just one week in all that time.

“But he told me I needed to do this, that it was something I needed to do.”

At the end of December, once the tour is completed, Ms Gunn and Mr Rivera will reconnect. They have already planned to spend ten days together.

“I’m sure it’s going to be really weird getting home. The girls say that — it’s definitely an adjustment to go home and being in that environment,” Ms Gunn said.

“Here we’re in an environment that gets adjusted every day. It’s like that movie Groundhog Day — we’re waking up on the bus in a parking lot that looks the same every day.”

In the February 2005 issue of Mix, a professional audio and music production magazine, Billy Crater, the front-of-house engineer for HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., described the band’s December 2004 performance as “a show of brilliant talent and high-level emotion of 22 performers, including a six-piece rock band, an eight-piece string orchestra, eight lead and backup singers and a narrator that all provide a wonderfully creative environment.”

“We’re just everyday people,” insists Ms Gunn. “The people who come up and thank us, we’re just like ‘Thank you.’

“This is a great experience, though. It’s something that doesn’t happen all the time.”