Photo: mannheimsteamroller.com
Mannheim Steamroller
Mannheim Steamroller
Roxanne Layton doesn’t know exactly how many shows she’s played in the 26 years she’s been with Mannheim Steamroller.
But the recorder player knows she’ll be adding 58 more to that total this year as the orchestra, which plays the classical rock Christmas music of Chip Davis, makes its annual two-month holiday tour.
“I was trying to add it up yesterday,” Layton said. “Here’s an average of at least 40 shows a year. The first 10 years we didn’t have 40 shows. We were playing arenas to 10,000 people a night. So, let’s say 500 shows at least.”
And even though the Mannheim Steamroller program only changes slightly from year to year, Layton never gets tired of performing it, on her recorder and percussion. “There is such a joy to doing this,’ she said. “This music is timeless. It was the first Christmas album that so many people remember getting introduced to Mannheim Steamroller even though we know there was much more before that.”
Layton, in fact, came to Mannheim Steamroller before it became an American Christmas tradition. After graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music, Layton was working in Boston when she initially encountered Mannheim Steamroller.
“I won tickets from a radio station,” she said. “I was making recorders at the time and someone had given me Fresh Air III. I thought ‘This is so cool. It’s classical rock and roll.’ They had a [touring] orchestra back then and the trumpet player came into the shop. He asked if I wanted to come to rehearsal. I went from my shop with my instruments for the show, met Chip later and ended up talking with him until 2 a.m.”
Layton had left a tape with Davis, the Omaha-based composer who created the neo-classical new age group in 1974, who, apparently, listened immediately after. The next morning, Davis called Layton. “He asked ‘would you like to be on my next album?” That all happened in 24 hours,” Layton said.
Renaissance Dance
So why did Mannheim need a recorder player?
“Back in the Renaissance, the recorder was like the trumpet and the saxophone, it was the instrument that led all the dances,” Layton said. “Chip is a big Renaissance fan. He was a bassoonist, but he was also a great recorder player and drummer, which is a double you don’t see out there.”
Adding Layton to the group gave Davis, who, for years, played with Mannheim on tour, additional flexibility in his role on stage. “What it did was allow him to play the recorder while I played the drums or I could play the recorder while he plays drums,” she said of Davis, who no longer tours, but still appears at special Mannheim Steamroller events.
Like every other music group and artist, Mannheim Steamroller was unable to tour in 2020. But it is back this year, with two companies of the group on tour—one east and one west.
Their program is identical and will be largely made up of “Mannheim Steamroller Christmas,” Davis’s first Christmas album that he has just remastered and issued on vinyl, played in its entirety to mark its 35th anniversary.
That music will be performed by an orchestra that is made up of a core group of Steamroller players, like Layton, and musicians brought in from each community or area where the group performs, who rehearse in the afternoons before the evening show.
That combination works well, Layton said, as the local musicians come in well prepared and the rehearsal tightens up the music before the performances.
“We do the same program every night,” she said. “For me, I just try to do it better every night. For me, it’s a gift to get to enjoy this music. I still cry at a point in ‘Oh Holy Night.’ I just did it last night at rehearsal. I try not to cry during the shows, but sometimes it happens.”
Manheim Steamroller perform Dec. 12 at the Riverside Theater.
