Gene Watts Canadian Brass Turns 30By Ulla Colgrass, 1999The trombone seems almost incidental to Gene Watts' life. He lives and breathes music, so any instrument would probably have made him a superb musician, but the trombone was handed to him in his school band in Missouri. It is now 30 years ago that he founded The Canadian Brass and he continues to play the world's stages with his lucid, elegant sound. Other members of the celebrated Canadian Brass are Ron Romm (trumpet), Jens Lindemann (trumpet) and Chris Cooper (French horn); Chuck Daellenbach (tuba) has been Gene's creative foil from the beginning. The quintet performs a wide range of music from jazz to classical and new music on their famous gold-plated Yamaha instruments. They take their wit and music on the road 200 days year and have produced more than 50 CDs. Hundreds of works that the group has generated so far are published by Hal Leonard and are used widely by musicians and music students. Through all this, Gene has provided the philosophical underpinnings. Music is wonderful. It's not intellectual ideas, it's feeling. That's my whole life, searching for that vibration that communicates with people. You can't intellectually explain why a certain piece works, or maybe doesn't work, even though it's a great piece. But you feel it. Sometimes we change the programming just before we go on stage, because I sense it's right. Because I'm so pushy, it has been allowed in the group that I do this.Gene smiles wryly at this remark, because he is anything but pushy or authoritative. He is curiously intense and very relaxed at the same time. Confrontation and stress are not part of his life. Other members of the group agree that Gene works in mysterious ways. This is his very personal view of performing: Everyone has a frequency. If you have an audience with a very strong frequency, a collective conscience, the performer needs to respond to that. Say the audience focuses on one element on stage. That focus increases this element in the performer, if he doesn't get nervous and shaky. That's what stage fright is. If your own state is strong enough to accept 2,000 people looking at you, you can use that energy in your performance. You can throw it back and it sets up a chain reaction.Bet you didn't learn that in music school! And here is more authentic Watts: The more experience you have, the stronger commitment you have to your own frequency and the more influence you have over an audience, no matter what you play. When you identify with something - God or love - you are completely open. That's where infinite energy comes from. If you say, I only had three hours sleep last night and it's not a very good audience, or this job doesn't pay very much, then that's what the audience gets. I like to tell young performers that the audience knows every thought you have, not intellectually but by feeling.Gene's highly developed intuition goes way back to his childhood when he was immersed in jazz and was dreaming of playing in a dance band. I had inherited a whole stack of arrangements for dance bands. I would go through them in my mind and imagined being there and seeing people dancing. It's probably the same thing going on now when I plan a program and I imagine the response of the audience.The euphonium (tenor tuba) was Gene's first childhood instrument. His mother was a piano teacher and he heard much classical music. But he leaned towards jazz and soon found jazz clubs in his small home town of Sedalia, which was part of the Underground Railroad and had attracted a lot of African-American players. The white folks didn't even know them. I always wanted to play jazz and started sitting in with them when I was 14 or 15. I was too young to drink and to know what else was going on. They used to talk about 'the weed' and I had no idea what they were talking about.Gene financed his studies at the University of Missouri in Columbia with his Dixieland band, the Missouri Mudcats. He studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston and entered the world of symphony orchestras, playing in North Carolina, Milwaukee, San Antonio, and finally Toronto, where Seiji Ozawa had picked him as principal trombonist. Soon he met Chuck, who had just started teaching at the University of Toronto. They found that they had both studied with the legendary teacher Arnold Jacobs in Chicago. Their creative minds immediately clicked, and soon Gene's brass quartet became The Canadian Brass of five. There are jokes about Gene and Chuck being in a 30-year meeting a continual creative process that goes on in airports or restaurants day or night. The Canadian Brass' first ideas were inspired by The Hamilton Plan. An hour's drive west of Toronto, the Hamilton Philharmonic had hired the group as part of an ambitious educational program. The main focus was on school concerts, which The Canadian Brass used as a great laboratory for musical experiments to the delight of the kids. In those days, a lot of orchestra players didn't really like playing children's shows. It was sort of beneath their dignity to do them, and if they did them they'd play down to the kids. I love to play any kind of performance. We approached the school shows differently and were serious about them being successful. I had young children at that time, and I knew that an eight-year old is very sophisticated. We took the responsibility for these concerts. If they didn't work out, it was our fault.Today, when adults come backstage to meet The Canadian Brass after concerts they often talk about those far-out 'music lessons' they had as children. The Brass used acting, mime and all styles of music to take the kids as far as they could before they brought them back - if at all. The students who enjoyed these 300 concerts in the early '70s have gone forth and multiplied and now make up three generations of The Canadian Brass fans. Unfortunately, the youngest are too late for the great Canadian Brass lab experiments in music. Canadian Brass concerts, even with much classical music, gained popular appeal because of Gene's and Chuck's lively banter at the mikes and the well-staged presentations. Gene compares his sparring with Chuck to jazz. The two have a chord structure but they don't know exactly what they are going to say. It's a natural process that neither considers acting, and it is never the same. Through all this, the music itself is kept pure. They don't fool around with Bach or any other Bs for that matter. Gene introduced all past and present members of The Canadian Brass to meditation. They all enjoy it and it keeps them sane, especially with heavy touring around the world away from their families. Gene also finds that meditation strengthens the group's collective conscience and creativity. Music represents a spiritual aspect of who we are. It gives us a way to experience what's beyond the intellect. That is the value of music in society, especially classical music. It's so dangerous that it is being pushed out more and more. Everybody is geared towards controlling what we think. The truth is that we are much more than intellect. There's nothing wrong with the intellect as long as it's used properly. It's like a computer. If it turns out to be the master, then we are in trouble.Gene has grandchildren now. He looks and acts much the same as ever, probably because of his mellow philosophical take on life. He shares his Toronto home with film maker Barbara Sweete, who has produced many outstanding music films for Rhombus Media. When given a chance, they escape to a second home in Florida. Even after all these years, the excitement of making music hasn't faded for Gene. We have played many times in Vienna in a large concert hall. It sells out every time and they really love us there. Imagine, we're doing Carmen in the heart of Western music culture. I pinch myself - is this real?
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