Christmas from Mannheim

There's a wide variety of holiday traditions out there. This year, my husband and I tried out something that's a tradition for a lot of other people: going to see Mannheim Steamroller perform a Christmas concert, during their two-day tour stop here in Denver.

Mannheim Steamroller is fairly ubiquitous during the Christmas season. You hear the music, arranged by Chip Davis, whether you've ever bought one of the albums or not. (The bouncy synth take on Deck the Halls seems to me to be the one that pops up all over.) Between that casual exposure and the fact that, well, the concert was mostly going to be Christmas standards, we figured that would be enough of a grounding to attend and have fun.

Still, the fact that the show played in the Buell Theater perhaps set me up to expect less of a typical musical concert and more... a show laced with performance? It was very much the former, though -- even down to the groupies. You could tell that for some people in the audience, this was an annual Christmas tradition. The band would strike up a new song, get two notes in, and you'd hear people sitting up straighter, or whispering "yes!" This was the most well-mannered rock concert you could ever imagine going to, but it had that vibe.

The show was split between two main styles of music. One was the synth-driven pop I was expecting -- though less generated entirely by synth than you might imagine. Two keyboard players and an EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) player drove a lot of the arrangements, but percussion, bass, a small string section, and a pair of live horn players were part of the band. The other style, which might not have surprised me if I'd actually listened to an entire Mannheim Steamroller album before, was essentially Renaissance music -- harpsichord, recorders, and old drums.

This was the 35th anniversary tour of Mannheim Steamroller -- a Christmas tour that's grown so successful there are now two different incarnations of the band traveling the country for the season. No doubt you get the same program at either, as the concert was supported by an array of videos that played behind the musicians. I had to wonder if these too were part of the tradition for the real Steamroller fans, as some of the videos looked to have been created back in the 80s. The retro vibe did bring a bit of a smile to my face. It may have been a little cheesy, but there was something about it that felt perfectly at home with the sound.

I'd say for me, the show was about a B-. It was fun to have done, but I doubt it will become a part of our tradition. On the other hand, it was exactly like going to a concert for a band you don't know very well -- more than I'd have expected for a Christmas concert where I thought I'd know most of the songs.