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Canadian Brass casts usual spell over crowd

Glenn Giffin Special to The Denver Post, February 2003

As a corporate entity, The Canadian Brass has been a going concern for just more than 30 years. The membership has changed during that time, but the ensemble's savvy blend of class and pop, of deft arrangements and high jinks, has made it the touchstone for similar ensembles worldwide.

The quintet performed Saturday night in Boettcher Concert Hall. It was a good crowd, as the Canadian Brass has been a regular visitor to the Mile High City and has a following. This was not your usual symphony audience.

For class, there was a hand of Handel ("Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from the oratorio "Solomon"), renaissance-early baroque tunes from Samuel Scheidt and G. Gabrielli, even the quintet's dazzling arrangement of J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, originally for organ, but realized splendidly for these players. It was tuba player Charles Daellenbach who cheerily noted of Scheidt's "Galliard Battaglia" (the Battle Galliard - a musical depiction of a time when warriors faced one another within arm's reach) that there was "no winner - that's because we're a Canadian group."

For pops, there were some down home and tough arrangements of Jelly Roll Morton ("Black Bottom Stomp"), Frank Burnett ("My Melancholy Baby") and W.C. Handy ("St. Louis Blues"). And they didn't forget the big-band era, with some Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller medleys. You wonder, had a group as good as this been present at the creation of early jazz, what might have happened? They sound like naturals.

And for fun, there was Peter (P.D.Q. Bach) Schickele's "Hornsmoke (A Horse Opera in One Act)," amusingly set out and demonstrating why the Canadian Brass is better known for instrumental performance than vocal.

As always, the quintet (trumpeters Ryan Anthony and Joe Burgstaller, trombonist Eugene Watts, French horn player Jeff Nelsen and Daellenbach on tuba) had the zest of performers sure of what they do and of how to make the best effect.

Fans will be waiting for their next visit to Denver with more than a little impatience. The Canadian Brass knows to leave 'em wanting more.

FOR REFERENCE ONLY. NOT TO BE REPUBLISHED.