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Mannheim Steamroller READY TO FLY
By John Benson
Considering the holidays are here, odds are the next month will be spent seeing Santa Claus’ face and hearing the music of Mannheim Steamroller.
The onslaught of the latter begins Monday with a return performance at Powers Auditorium in Youngstown, and then a few days later with an appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The new-age group has its own float.
That will be followed up with the NBC broadcast “Pandora Unforgettable Holiday Moments on Ice,” which airs the Sunday after Thanksgiving and features a cast of Olympic and world figure-skating champions performing to classic Mann-heim Steamroller Christmas songs.
“Figure skating and music is a good fit for openers,” said band visionary and Toledo native Chip Davis, calling from his Omaha, Neb., home. “Also, my music has gymnastic overtones to it. There’s a lot of rhythm to it, so it gives the skaters a lot of opportunities. Some of these guys do back flips and all kinds of crazy stuff, and there are things that are up-tempo in the music where they can really fly around the ice at high speeds.”
Flying around the country is what Mannheim Steamroller is doing these days at a breakneck pace. Even though a back injury forced Davis to stop touring and performing with the group he formed in 1974, the outfit is now split into five different incarnations.
There are the two holiday touring acts, as well as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade outfit, which makes up part of the ice-skating group. There’s also an Orlando band that headlines the Christmas season at Universal Orlando Resort.
This year, the touring entities are all performing material from the recently released “Christmas Symphony II,” which acts as a companion album to 2011’s first installment, “Christmas Symphony.” Unlike the earlier album, the new effort expands the Mann-heim Steamroller sound to include orchestral strings and percussion.
“The synthesizer and electronic aspects are still in there, but it’s with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra playing with Mannheim,” Davis said. “Some of the original elements of the original arrangements are still there, but it’s with the symphonic addition to it instead of just studio strings or something like that. This gives an entirely different feel.”
A different feel that seems familiar is what Davis was going for with “Christmas Symphony II,” as well as the current touring Mannheim Steamroller live show, which over the decades has become a holiday tradition that continues to attract new generations.
“I think because it’s a holiday favorite and it’s something that’s very safe and very family friendly,” Davis said. “So people bring their kids because they want to experience it the way they did when they were kids. It’s just passed on generation to generation as part of the Christmas season.”