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Where No Brass Has Gone Before

By Daniel Shearer, New Brunswick, December 1999

Donning tuxedos with rainbow-striped tennis shoes has a way of grabbing attention. Nearly 30 years ago, several musicians from Toronto knew they'd need a lot of flash to make a living performing chamber music.

Not many people have seen five brass players walk out on stage, poke fun at Canadians and then cut loose with a remarkable arrangement of Toccata and Fugue, Bach's masterpiece for pipe organ. Equally preposterous: a choreographed  bullfight during George Bizet's Carmen, complete with a candid explanation beforehand that the original opera did not, in fact, have a part for a bull.

Clearly, the members of the Canadian Brass take antics quite seriously. Now busy with a holiday tour that includes a Dec. 16 stop at the State Theatre in New Brunswick,the Canadian Brass' founding tuba player. Chuck Daellenbach, takes a few minutes to talk about the road to success that has produced more than 60 recordings and led to appearances with just about every major orchestra in North America.

"We knew what we were up against," says Mr. Daellenbach, who left the Eastman School of Music with a doctorate at age 25 and headed north to teach music at the University of Toronto. He met trombone player Gene Watts soon after that and left his job for a life on stage.

"I think when we started, there were a handful of groups, but there were none that were making a living actually playing brass quintet music. We were well aware of it. "

"We knew the old rules, and, more importantly, that the repertoire we inherited was not strong enough to support a career. Getting people to write for us became our number one obsession. In a sense, we needed to create an audience for what we wanted to do."

Since there were few arrangements for brass choir at the time, the members of the Canadian Brass wrote their own music. Each of the musicians arranged a few pieces, including trumpet player Fred Mills, who put together their trademark Toccata and Fugue and more than 50 other works before leaving the ensemble in 1996. "At first, it was really satisfying just to get to the point where we're out playing," says Mr. Daellenbach. "There's several pieces that we feel have actually given the work a new and different perspective. As a brass quintet, we even played the Toccata and Fugue in D-minor at an organ convention once. "

"We thought, 'OK, this is it,' and went in. Afterward, even some of the organists said to us that it was interesting to hear it on brass because they were able to follow the lines more easily. The complex contrapuntal structure of a Bach piece, they were able to identify it differently through the brass. We thought it really passed the big test in that sense." Together with Trumpeter Ron Romm and Trombonist Gene Watts, Mr. Daellenbach has been with the Canadian Brass from its early days.

"We got into the string quartet small-hall tours in the '70s, and we started playing the same halls that the Juilliard String Quartet and the Tokyo String Quartet would play, and then we did Carnegie Hall in 1979."

"We took a deep breath to do that, because we had a lot of money at risk, as you can well imagine. And our review it couldn't have been more perfect. The reviewer came and said that the Canadian Brass showed itself to be a large hall attraction. That was the best review from Carnegie Hall, because that spread like wildfire around the country and we started playing 3,000-seat halls."

Another piece that has become one of the ensemble's most requested compositions, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee," took a light and fluttering flute melody and gave the part to the bulky tuba for the Canadian Brass arrangement.

"James Galway, the flutist, challenged us," says Mr. Daellenbach. "He saw we were coming to the same concert hall he was playing, so he said to the manager 'Tell the boys that I play that faster than they do.' When we got there the next week, we heard the story, timed it, and then sent him a fax immediately and said, 'OK. You're on.'"

"For about four years, we had this thing back and forth, challenging each other on the timing. We got ours down to under 30 seconds, but by that point, we couldn't recognize the melody anymore and we decided it was time to stop. We appeared on the same concert stage last year, and I think that was the official truce."

Around Christmas, the Canadian Brass supplements its programs with a number of works that go beyond the normal seasonal music realm. Lately, the group has been doing "The Fairy Queen" as part of a suite of Purcell trumpet sonatas, along with "Winter" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and several Duke Ellington tunes arranged for the group by Luther Henderson.

"We have to stretch this one a bit, but it seems that the joy that Ellington brought to his music is very compatible with the season," says Mr. Daellenbach. "Our little tribute to Duke, Ellington is rather important to us right now."

"Luther Henderson wrote the music for our Ellington CD, which is basically what we're featuring with our tribute. He actually went to the Juilliard School, and then his first job was Duke Ellington's arranger. Duke called him his classical right arm. He basically did the same thing for us. He was able to feature the Canadian Brass and give us the same feeling, style, even riffs in some cases, of the original Duke Ellington concepts."

Christmas just wouldn't feel right without a few carols, though. For its finale, the group always leads its audience through a sing-a-long. First of all, Gene: We appointed him conductor," Mr. Daellenbach says. "We all had a try at it and he seemed to have a knack. It turned out that his dad was a preacher."

"He came by this honestly that he could stand up in front of the audience and coax them to become singers. We do 'Silent Night,' which is very straightforward, and then, the second one is quite difficult 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas,' and it's got some complications in it, so Gene just levels with the audience and tells them that it's troublesome but he doesn't want them to go home with bad feelings. He has a little rehearsal before we start, to ease over the tough spots. It's always great fun."

FOR REFERENCE ONLY. NOT TO BE REPUBLISHED.