An underwhelming holiday concert

A good friend of mine once told me that I “cannot handle my Christmas.” Every year just before Thanksgiving, I get a little dizzy from sugarplum fairies dancing in my head, and the madness doesn’t subside until every decoration is packed away in January.

So one can imagine my delight at the prospect of finally seeing Mannheim Steamroller’s legendary holiday performance live.

Mannheim has been the soundtrack of my seasonal activities for as long as I can remember. For 25 years, the company has been dazzling audiences with the enormous sound of all things “Christmas.” To solidify the experience, I brought along my mom, lover of all things seasonal and a Mannheim devotee ready to applaud with the best of them.

My mother and I arrived at the Milwaukee Theatre just as the show was beginning. The audience sat rapt with anticipation as the opening notes of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” drifted over their heads. My mom bobbed along excitedly, all too anxious to get to our seats for what was to be the experience of our shared adulthood. By the show’s end, though, our fiery excitement had cooled considerably.

While Mannheim Steamroller has been a staple for many during the holidays, 25 years of legacy makes for a seamless, but altogether predictable show. What’s worse is that Mannheim has become a caricature of itself: after a quarter-century of production, the once novel poly-symphonic sound has been normalized to the dangerous point of becoming muzak.

This isn’t to say there wasn’t anything enjoyable about this particular show. Throughout the 21-song performance, individual musicians contributed to the signature sound that is the Steamroller. Of the East Coast cast performing in Milwaukee, my favorite players were Jeff Yang (violin, recorders, and concertmaster) and percussionists Joey Gulizia and Tom Sharpe — their passion and excitement was infectious on stage.

During a song called “Above the Northern Lights,” Mannheim attempted to channel the ghost of Christmas past à la pink Floyd, complete with fish tank-inspired lighting representative of Aurora Borealis. Layers of heavy vocal synths and the charging volume of the music made it difficult to hear any of the lyrics, but the effort was laudable and for the audience, it was a nice change-up from the rest of the set.

Mannheim redeemed themselves near the performance’s end as they played their megahit “Carol of the Bells,” and a few encore numbers after a standing ovation. The musicians delivered the finale with the passion I anticipated would color the whole evening.

Perhaps the decades spent with Mannheim Steamroller’s holiday albums set the live experience up for failure. I wanted to be caught in the rapturous movements of pure excitement, but it wasn’t meant to be. Having mastered their overall style, Mannheim would do well to translate their sound into other non-seasonal genres, using their clear demonstration of skills for something more challenging and exciting. Watching well-trained musicians perform holiday music with the exact precision found on their recordings was the emotional equivalent of seeing guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani play rhythm guitar for a children’s Christmas pageant.

There will always be a place for this music in the holiday soundtrack of my heart and will no doubt be present on Christmas mornings to come. But alas, my Mannheim Steamroller experience ends there.

Equal parts talented orchestration and madrigal fare, the group seems to have found a formula that works for them, and in concert, rarely deviate from it. To the bitter end, perennial favorites run through the ears of human synthesizers, giving nearly every song a kind of predictability that takes away from what could have otherwise been a delightful show.

Mannheim Steamroller plays a second show tonight, Dec. 23, at the Milwaukee Theatre. Click here for more information.