‘88 Yellowstone Fire Was Spark for Concert to Raise Funds for Park : Benefit: Composer Chip Davis wants to help the Park Service get out the word that the park is OK and contribute as much as $1 million for programs there.

Lightning and thunder will be flashing around Irvine Meadows tonight, followed by cool, clear skies.

No, the drought hasn’t ended, and the weather forecast doesn’t call for summer storms. The lightning bolts and the rolls of thunder will be part of a special “Concert for Yellowstone” in which composer Chip Davis will conduct his Mannheim Steamroller and the Pacific Symphony.

The multimedia event will be filled with technological special effects and large orchestra textures from Mannheim Steamroller’s “Yellowstone, the Music of Nature” recording. The program is part of a 20-concert tour through which Davis hopes to focus public interest on Yellowstone while raising up to $1 million to support various projects at the park.

“One of the things I wanted to do,” Davis said , “was to help the Park Service get out the word that Yellowstone was OK. The 1988 fires were part of its natural cycle; they take place every 200 or 300 years.”

The combination of Yellowstone and Davis seems logical enough. All of Mannheim Steamroller’s albums have been rich with the sounds of nature. Davis became acutely aware of the situation at Yellowstone when he saw the sky above his Nebraska home darkened by the fires in the national park hundreds of miles away.

Even though the damage had been minimal, as he found out on a subsequent visit to Yellowstone, Davis felt an urgent need to provide support. “Since music is what I do,” he said, “the logical way to offer that support was through some sort of recording or program.”

The “Concert for Yellowstone” and the recording were the result. “Yellowstone has a piece of the record as well as the profits from the tour,” Davis said. “Thus far we’ve already raised about $140,000, and we’ve only done four concerts out of 20. So things are looking good.”

Tonight’s audiences will hear--among other things--a large, rambling work depicting a day in Yellowstone’s wilderness. Original musical interludes by Davis surround excerpts from such classical pieces as Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and Respighi’s “Pines of Rome.”

“The concept, of course, was to track a day in the life of Yellowstone,” he said, “from bright, squeaky-clean morning through an afternoon storm and into the night.

“There was one overall criterion in the choices we made: all the pieces of music should be about nature. And we also wanted things to fit together.

“Take the ‘Pines of Rome,’ for example. One of the movements has birds in it, which ties it very nicely to one of my interludes, which also has birds. When we do it in concert, the birds just segue across from one piece to the other, and it makes it seem as though they were melded together.

“The same thing’s true of the cloudburst from Ferde Grofe’s ‘Grand Canyon Suite.’ It’s got a tremendous amount of turmoil, which worked great for all the fire scenes. And it’s also got rain and thunder in it, which again tied into my fifth interlude, which also has rain and thunder.”

The elaborate program--which requires myriad complex technical details, a full orchestra and large multiscreen slide projections--might have intimidated many musicians. But Davis, who is in his early 40s, has had a solid track record as an artist and as a businessman.

His creation of Mannheim Steamroller has been one of the most remarkable success stories in the music business. He was best known as the composer of Van McCoy’s 1976 hit, “Convoy,” when he went on to form a group reflecting his eclectic interests in musical forms. Mannheim Steamroller--the name is a play on an 18th-Century musical term--was the result.

American Gramaphone Records was formed (it originally operated out of Davis’ garage), and the ensuing “Fresh Aire” recordings (a wordplay on the English word for light melody) became best-sellers.

“I like to feel that a good part of our success,” Davis said, “traces to the fact that we treat all elements of our activities the same way. The people who work in my company, the type of environment we work in, the way we deal with our distributors, clear down to the kinds of materials we use--all come from the same attitude. And that’s to try to do everything with the ultimate craft and quality that we can, whether it’s collecting bills or recording music.

“Treating people with respect comes from the same perspective we take in the Fresh Aire recordings. Feeling love and respect for nature, in my mind, is no different from the way we handle our recording business.”

Among the other items on Davis’ full plate of activities are a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas tour, scheduled for later this year, and continued expansion of American Gramaphone’s activities. Fresh Aire fans will be happy to hear that Davis is just putting the final touches on Mannheim Steamroller’s first Fresh Aire album in several years.

“It’s Fresh Aire VII,” Davis said of the title, “and it’s all about the significance of the number 7 . You know, 7 ‘s been a magical number in practically every religion and philosophy around the world; it’s all over the place. I thought since this was our seventh album that the number itself might make a good topic.”

Davis put his research team to work and spent “years reading up on the number seven.” The result is a set of pieces grouped around seven topics ranging from the chakras of the body to the seven stars of the Big Dipper.

“There are things in 7/4 and 7/16 meter,” he explained. “And we used a lot of seven-part rondo forms. I also discovered a poetic rhyme of Chaucer’s which is also a seven-part form. The whole process has given me an opportunity to use all my musical chops, all my experience and expertise, to test a wide range of emotions.”

Tonight’s main course, however, will be the Concert for Yellowstone. “Sometimes it can be difficult, when I’m super-saturated, moving from one mode to another, from one project to another. If I’m having a good time with a creative activity and then have to shift gears and make a business decision about company direction, it can be a real chore.

“But projects like this one, when I’m performing great music with a wonderful ensemble for a really important purpose--these are the things that make it all worthwhile.”

Mannheim Steamroller and the Pacific Symphony perform at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $18.50 to $24.50. Information: (714) 740-2000.