Chuck Daellenbach on Tuba and the Canadian BrassBy Ulla Colgrass, 1999Chuck Daellenbach likes to quote a colleague: "To play the tuba, you have to be old enough to carry it and young enough to still want to play it." Chuck is a founding member of the celebrated Canadian Brass, now entering the quintet's 30th anniversary season. He is definitely young enough to play and frolic on stage with his tuba, along with his contemporaries Ron Romm (trumpet) and Gene Watts (trombone). Two younger members recently added new verve to The Canadian Brass ź Jens Lindemann (trumpet) and Chris Cooper (French horn). Like a proud father, Chuck starts this interview by talking about the other members of the group - how wonderful they are. The truth is that most people who play a bass instrument have a desire to play those bass parts. I came to it through my dad, who was a band director in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. I began in the fourth grade and had a music lesson virtually every day while I grew up. When I was in the ninth grade, my dad's high school band was going to play Kalinnikov's Fourth Symphony, which has a very difficult last movement with a big tuba part. He gave me the chance. He put me in the fifth chair, but I played the solos.So Chuck was on the fast track from the start. His home was surround-sound with music. There was Chuck's tuba, his father's trombone, his two sisters' cello and flute, and his mother's singing, perhaps not the makings of an ideal quintet, but a rich environment. Before he had time to choose a profession, Chuck became a musician. Along with the joy of playing the tuba, his life had become a creative process that is still going strong. While in high school, he spent two summers in a special program at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, which enabled him to enter that school as a second year student on full scholarship. At age 25, he had his Ph.D. It is a known fact that Chuck always has looked much younger than his years. What could he have looked like when he took on his first teaching job at the University of Toronto - 25 going on 15? Oh, there was a funny incident when I arrived in 1970. I was waiting in a U of T office along with another fellow who was being interviewed for a groundskeeper job. He was very neatly dressed in a suit and tie. I was in my shorts and a T-shirt, waiting for my first check. A woman comes out of her office and walks up to the other guy and says, "Dr. Daellenbach?" When I identified myself, she probably thought, "Is this the end of civilization as we know it or just an isolated incident?"Soon after he touched down in Canada, Chuck auditioned for the Hamilton Philharmonic, which was just an hour's drive from Toronto. He got the job and later found that his first student at the U of T was the very guy he had taken the job from - a little awkward, Chuck admits. But Hamilton offered an auspicious connection for Chuck. He met Gene Watts, who had started a brass quartet as part of an ambitious project called The Hamilton Plan. The plan exposed every child in a 60-mile radius to hearing the groups that form an orchestra, and finally returning to hear the full orchestra play in the main hall. Gene and I found each other. He is extremely creative, about a foot off the ground. I always felt I was the guy who could tie him down now and then. I'm also creative but not on Gene's spiritual level. The best advice I was ever given was, Never be jealous of genius. Rub shoulders with it. Gene is such a person to me. We are completely different, yet complement each other.Soon Gene's brass quartet became a quintet named The Canadian Brass Ensemble, later renamed the snappier Canadian Brass. At first they spent every working day playing for school kids in The Hamilton Plan. Chuck thinks the group's unique identity was shaped by the freedom that came from not having other musicians hear them play for a long time. Most musicians in the orchestra were trying to avoid those children's shows. To us they were a great laboratory. The goal was to keep a child engaged for 50 minutes. We kept raising the bar - how to get them to listen quietly to a piece by Bach for three or four minutes and then shout and holler afterwards. We would take the students right to the edge, sometimes over the edge. We were learning a lot about relating to an audience.These were formative years. Chuck and Gene knew that there was no set path for solo brass players, so they created their own. They broke with tradition by talking to audiences and carrying their personalities right onto the stage instead of parking them in the wings as most serious performers do. They added energy and lively humor, though the music itself was performed with the purity of its intent, regardless of style. Gene never likes to know what an engagement pays. He just wants to play. Whether it's for school kids or for heads of state makes no difference to the energy he puts into it. Money is the reward afterwards, not the motivation.As soon as The Canadian Brass had found the unique style that is still evolving, it was a hit in festivals, concerts and lots of live CBC broadcasts. The Toronto Star reviewer wrote after their first public concert: Some of the finest brass playing heard in Toronto for a long time. Nearly 30 years later, the group has produced more than 50 CDs in a wide range of styles from Gabrieli to jazz to new commissioned works. Many brass groups around the world have made The Canadian Brass their guiding star. A few have tried to imitate them outright, but that has fallen flat because their personalities cannot be copied. "We can't even imitate each other", says Chuck. Chuck is the undisputed wit on stage, always ready to play off Gene's gentle humor. Both work the microphones with ease, but they enter a concentrated musical state when they pick up their gleaming gold-plated Yamaha instruments. Chuck is surprisingly agile with his voluminous tuba.
Behind the scenes, Chuck takes charge of much of The Canadian Brass' business, which is spread as wide as the group's international touring. People are working for them in Florida, New York, Hamburg, Frankfurt, London, Milwaukee, Hamilton and Toronto. The large collection of 200 brass works that is published under The Canadian Brass banner by Hal Leonard in Milwaukee is also Chuck's specialty. Along with the works played on stage by the Brass, he has developed a popular educational series for brass students, with many of the works accompanied by CDs. The growing publishing venture now constitutes 25% of The Canadian Brass business. Friends of The Canadian Brass marvel at Chuck's energy and focus. He always searches for what is around the next corner, which is a key to the group's success. His dialogue with Gene has been ongoing for almost 30 years to the point where they don't arrange meetings. Any time day or night is good enough for them. Chuck and his wife, singer Mary Beth, live in Toronto with their two young boys. Their upbringing is a late and much loved responsibility for Chuck. Perhaps these little guys will also play music with their father after supper, except on the 200 days when he is on the road.
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