ABSTRACT
Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, and founded in 1974 by Chip Davis, this performing group’s name was derived from an 18th-century orchestra known for building intensity by adding layers of sound, color, texture, other instruments, and volume. Davis, a classically trained musician and composer who had already created and recorded a number of bestselling and innovative country and western hits, had gone on to compose, produce, and record, in state-of-the-art sound, an innovative and new form of music that he called 18thcentury rock and roll. He named his first production Fresh Aire and approached several record companies about a contract. Politely rebuffed by all of them because the music defied being pigeonholed into a specific musical category, Davis went together with Don Sears to create American Gramaphone, a record company that was specifically oriented toward producing his new style of music, which has since come to be called New Age. Rather than market through record stores, the recordings were sold to stereo showrooms and audio salons that were demonstrating home hi-fi equipment to serious audio enthusiasts. The result was a hit, followed by a run of remarkable sales successes from an entire series of top-selling Fresh Aire releases, in addition to a number of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums that both serious audio enthusiasts and the general public found very listenable. Davis has made a point of using cutting-edge electronic-music forms, combined with equally cutting-edge recording technologies. Today, having produced three multi-platinum, two platinum, and 14 gold recordings, with consistently high positions on sales charts, the group continues to successfully tour and also produce best-selling albums in both compact disc and DVD music formats, with innovations that even include educational videos in DVD video form.
