‘Mannheim Steamroller Christmas’ equals live mall music

The Mannheim Steamroller preshow music, playing while people were finding their seats, sounded a lot like Mannheim Steamroller.

This is, in fact, the usual place for this music. In the background. The Steamroller Christmas albums are huge sellers, so somebody must buy them and listen at home. But for a lot of us, the synthetic Christmas instrumentals are known as mall music, pleasant and vaguely uplifting, powering us through the department stores until we can make it back to Starbucks.

So when the lights go down and the curtain (in this case a scrim for video projections) goes up, what is a Mannheim live show going to be?

As it turns out, pleasant and vaguely uplifting music that's just a little more in the foreground. Plus, we are occasionally entertained by gymnastic dancers who do acrobatics, both on the ground and in the air.

As a newbie to the Mannheim juggernaut that entertains millions on the road, the lack of overall performance value in "Mannheim Steamroller Christmas" was a bit of a surprise.

The scrim may lift physically, but there's still a distance between the audience and the musical ensemble.

For all the people onstage, the whole thing seemed pretty tracked and synthesized, making it hard to source specific sounds to specific musicians. There weren't many places where we really felt the presence of the eight string players or four horns augmenting the six-piece band.

Perhaps the ensemble of mostly local talent just needs more time to break in. But the presentation seems stiff by design.

(The producers were brave to invite the press on opening night, making sure we knew they considered it only "95 percent" there. But I would assume the other 5 percent to be technical tweaks - lighting, or getting the video in the right aspect ratio, so the images don't look stretched - and not the fundamental structure or musical approach.)

The basic Mannheim sound appears to derive from one recording: Emerson, Lake & Palmer's 1977 riff on "Fanfare for the Common Man." Tune after tune ("Hallelujah Chorus," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Joy to the World," "Deck the Halls," etc.) trumpets the melody with a heroic keyboard lead, supported by a percolating rhythm underneath.

Ah, but if only Chip Davis, the composer-arranger-impresario behind Mannheim, had actually seen Emerson, Lake & Palmer perform. He might have noticed they used to put on a helluva show.

We don't expect anyone here to dump over a Hammond B-3 and play it upside down. But don't expect us to say "Whoa!" when - wait for it ... - one of the two keyboard guys plays standing up!

The Mannheim show is instrumental music, with no vocals. Without a singer to command attention, a little chatter might help explain the less-familiar tunes. They often turn out to be more interesting, daring to break the Emerson/"Fanfare" formula with natural piano or chamber music orchestrations.

The less-known tunes also bring on the six dancer-gymnasts to save the day, sometimes by taking flight from the aisles or hovering high over the seats. They create some pretty visuals, particularly in one striking segment where patterns are projected onto the long train of fabric dangled by one of the aerialists.

These hardworking folks, choreographed by Louanne Madorma, may not put Cirque du Soleil out of business. But at least they draw our attention back from our shopping lists, the next day's work, long reflections on where our life is taking us - all the things you are supposed to set aside in a Christmas show.

Unless you want to take a well-deserved nap. I think it's allowed. More than once, they actually show the video of burning fireplace logs.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at
mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.