Mannheim Steamroller Brings Holiday Magic to the Kirby Center
The soundtrack of the season is making its way back to Northeastern Pennsylvania as Mannheim Steamroller brings its iconic Christmas tour to the F.M. Kirby Center on Saturday, November 29. Now celebrating the 40th anniversary of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, the show has become a beloved holiday tradition—one that families return to year after year.
Drummer Tom Sharpe is one of six core musicians bringing Mannheim Steamroller’s music to life on stage. An internationally recognized composer and multi-instrumentalist now in his 18th season with the ensemble, Sharpe is known for his dynamic stage presence and cinematic musical style.
This year’s tour promises a full sensory experience, complete with a live local orchestra, dazzling visuals and a setlist that weaves together timeless favorites and a few surprises from founder Chip Davis’ groundbreaking Fresh Aire catalog.
Ahead of the Kirby Center performance, we caught up with Tom to talk about his journey, the legacy of Mannheim Steamroller and what fans can expect from this year’s spectacular holiday show.
Take me back to the beginning—how did you first get involved with the group and what made you decide to join?
It’s really remarkable that this will be my 18th season. I was on another tour with Dennis DeYoung, the lead singer of Styx, and once you’re in those circuits, your name gets passed around and you get noticed. I do have a bit of showmanship, so I tend to stick out sometimes—hopefully in a good way! Chip Davis, the original drummer and mastermind behind Mannheim Steamroller, heard about me and invited me to a private audition. Funny enough, the audition was literally the weekend before the tour started, so I probably would’ve had to really mess up not to get the gig, but we had a great time playing his music together and him showing me around. He’s a great guy and super excited to share all the amazing things he’s done with me.
Being the drummer now and filling that chair is a tremendous honor. Chip trusts me to do the Mannheim music the way he wants, but he also trusts me—and everyone in the group—to bring in some of our own creativity. We all know we’ve been trusted with this time-honored legacy and we approach it with great care. Some things are meant to be done a very specific way, and other things give us a little room to stretch and be creative, so the group evolves in different ways depending on the performers.
How many musicians are in Mannheim Steamroller, and do you ever perform with local musicians?
There are six of us that are considered the band and we tour. And then there will be an orchestra on stage with us as well. And they will be your local orchestra. They will be your high-level musicians that are either in the symphony or that they are your professors at the universities. We seek the highest level of orchestral musicians to round out our show. And then a fabulous lighting show with amazing lighting designers and video. We have huge, huge LED screens behind us. And the videos go all the way back to when it first began. So some of them, they’ve got just crystal clear, amazing technology, and others are taking you all the way back to 1975 when Mannheim Steamroller started. So it really is a kind of a retrospective type of concert where you get the full experience of all of these years.
This show has really become a holiday tradition—families love coming back year after year. What can they look forward to this season? Is there anything new or different you’re bringing to the stage?
Honestly, I would say come and expect a lot because we’re going to bring it. So come with high expectations. And it’s our job to play inspired so that we’re inspiring our audiences. That’s how we all feel. Chip is still very involved in creating our set music. And he does a great job of knowing what pieces people are coming to hear and expecting and keeping those pieces in. And also, there’s always room for new pieces or different pieces. The Mannheim Steamroller catalog is so vast that one of the things I look forward to every year is when I get the concert order and I see that some new pieces have come in that I’ve loved through the years, and that maybe I even played 10, 15 years ago, and then they went out of the set and now are back in. So new audiences are going to get the classics for sure, and for our longtime audiences, there will always be something new for them as well.
What’s your favorite part about the show night after night that you get to bring to a live audience?
Definitely, for me, it’s the connection with the audience. We all in the group have a real outward approach to our performances. And bringing that joy and seeing that joy on all of these faces, from parents that have brought their kids and now those kids have grown up and have brought their kids… it’s just amazing to think about what a tradition it is for everyone. And what keeps it fresh for us is knowing that we’re playing 50 shows and it is the same concert for the tour, but we know that each audience is new. And a lot of our audiences have this date checked on their calendar as a bucket list for the year, and we perform it seeing it through that lens.
One of my favorite things as far as the pieces that we do—being the drummer, I do love the rock part of it. But I also have a classical background, and I love that this show stretches me in different ways so that I can use my educational background with orchestral percussion and different instruments. So I like to rock out, and I also really love the beautiful, more sacred Christmas music—“O Holy Night” and “Silent Night.” And even some Chip Davis original Christmas pieces are in the show that are just beautiful, and it’s really a special thing for me to be a part of that.
Can you give us a little tease—something special audiences can look forward to this year?
We might not play some pieces right away that you are expecting, and we might make you wait a little bit for some of those. But I will tell you this—we’re not going to leave you wishing that you had heard something that you expected to hear.
It’s a real wonderful ebb and flow to the concert. We’re going to bring you up and then have a roller coaster back down and bring you back up again. And it really is a journey that I like to think we’re all sharing together.
Featured image of Tom Sharpe courtesy of Mannheim Steamroller
