Canadian Brass - ABOUT US

Reviews

Pucker up! Canadian Brass have Lips to Keep Going All Night

Saturday, May 15, 2004
By Jeff Kaczmarczyk
The Grand Rapids Press

If I were a woman, I would like to get these guys in a corner and give 'em a big kiss. Not so much as a thank you for a fine performance, but to satisfy a bit of curiosity about their lips.

The Canadian Brass have, what's known in the business, as "all-night chops," meaning they can keep going and going and going. Maybe if they wore fuzzy pink suits and carried drums, they could be celebrity spokesmen for Energizer batteries.

Alas, with crisp, white sneakers, all they could endorse is, sneakers. That and fine music-making.

The Canadian Brass, practitioners of superlative technique and purveyors of entertaining shows, returned to DeVos Performance Hall on Friday evening in the final set of Pops Series concerts of the season with the Grand Rapids Symphony.

In a sense, any performance by the brass is a homecoming, at least for their musical instruments. As official Yamaha Artists, the quintet all play on 24-karat gold-plated Yamaha instruments.

On the road continuously since 1970, with two founding members plus a third original who left and returned after many years, The Canadian Brass have carved out a niche all their own for virtuosity and showmanship with tuba and trumpets.

This was a pops concert, and the evening included medleys of Jerome Kern songs such as "Can't Help Loving Dat Man" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," all lightly orchestrated, working the full ensemble into the performance while leaving the quintet enough elbow room to do their thing.

Their thing was most enjoyable with a set of melodies from George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," all featuring quintet members in solo spots.

French hornist Jeff Nelsen's sizable range and deft stopped-horn technique made "Summertime" haunting and rewarding.
Tubist Chuck Daellenbach, as Porgy, and trumpeter Stuart Laughton, playing cornet as Bess, were a beautifully matched duet, sharing "Bess, You is My Woman Now."

Joe Burgstaller, who played plenty of piccolo trumpet throughout the night, made impressive use of the highest member of the brass family in several numbers, such as the traditional tune "High Society."

J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor has been in the quintet's book almost since their beginning of the group in 1970. Better known to many as the "Phantom of the Opera" theme -- the one before Andrew Lloyd Webber confused things -- originally was written for pipe organ, and is idiomatically suited to the instrument. When arranged for brass quintet, it's a wonder to behold, not only playing the notes but coordinating the antiphonal effects and keeping together the florid toccata sections.

Yet The Canadian Brass, particularly in the trumpets and horn, gave an exceptional performance full of dash and elan.
The boys in all-black outfits, interrupted only by those white sneakers, opened their program from the back of the auditorium, playing the mournful, New Orleans funeral staple "Just a Closer Walk With Three" as they strolled on stage. They ended the concert with another, the rollicking "St. Louis Blues."

Called back for an encore, the brass played a wild juxtaposition of "When the Saints Go Marching In" and Handel's "Hallelujah" Chorus featuring several hot choruses of improvisation by trombonist Gene Watts.

The Grand Rapids Symphony under associate conductor John Varineau opened each half with some crowd-pleasing tunes, even if the titles weren't recognizable, such as Emil von Reznicek's overture to the opera "Donna Diana," a melody more familiar to old-time radio listeners as the theme from the drama "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon."

Mikhail Glinka's Overture to "Ruslan and Ludmilla" opened the program, hot out of the blocks, sounding as smooth and assured as it was light and lively. Dmitri Kabalevsky's Overture to "Colas Breugnon" featured plenty of edge-of-your-seat playing.

You can't go wrong with a Strauss waltz, though what the Grand Rapids Symphony really played was a couple of galops and a march by the Johann "The Waltz King" Strauss Jr.'s father, Johann Strauss Sr.

The winds sparkled on the "Zampa Galop" and "Chinese Galop," and Varineau gave the "Radetzky March" a nice rugged gentility that eventually had the audience clapping along.

So much for another season at the Pops.

FOR REFERENCE ONLY. NOT TO BE REPUBLISHED.