One of the most accomplished brass ensembles in the world wowed the audience at First Baptist Church during opening night of the Cayman Arts Festival 2012 called ‘Bold as Canadian Brass’ on Thursday 9 February.
Canadian Brass, which ironically does not have a single member born in Canada in its current line-up, was formed in 1970 in Toronto and has produced more than 100 albums in its more than 41-year existence. Tuba player Chuck Daellenbach, the only original member still with the band, leads the band and its unique style of humorous virtuosity.
After beginning the concert by walking into the auditorium playing a rather sombre selection from Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli, Mr. Daellenbach immediately gave an indication the evening would be anything but sombre in tone.
“That’s not going to be the first piece you’ll hear us play tonight,” he joked. “It’s actually going to be our first encore.”
In addition to Mr. Daellenbach, Canadian Brass consists of trumpet players Brandon Ridenour and Chris Coletti, French horn player Eric Reed and Trombonist Achilles Liarmakopoulos. With exception of Mr. Liarmakopoulos, who is from Greece, all of the other band members were born in the United States, including Mr. Daellenbach, who moved to Canada to teach at the University of Toronto in 1970.
The talented quintet played many pieces by classic masters, sometimes with new arrangements just for brass.
For example, Mr. Ridenour said the band had concentrated much of the past few years on the music of Johannes Brahms.
“The problem is, Brahms didn’t write any music for brass,” he said. As a result the band produced an entire album of Brahms music arranged for brass, simply called ‘Brahms on Brass’. Last week, that recording was nominated for a Canadian Juno award for Classical Album of the Year.
The group played several selections from the album, including four of the new arrangements of Brahms’ waltzes.
Johann Sebastian Bach also received several covers, including Little Fugue in G Minor, an adaptation called Air on a G String and Luther Henderson’s jazzy adaptation of Bach’s Fugue No. 2 called Dixie Bach.
Mr. Henderson also arranged two other jazzy pieces played by Canadian Brass, Tuba Tiger Rag and The Saints’ Hallelujah, an entertaining marriage of The Saints Go Marching In and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus that the band once played for Queen Elizabeth II in a command performance.
Other pieces played by Canadian Brass included Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 7, which Mr. Ridenour said, “sounds like a drinking song”, Sonny Kompanek’s ‘Killer Tango” and a humorous medley called ‘Tribute to the Ballet’ in which the band members pranced around with deliberately poor ballet moves, with Liarmakopoulos donning a pink tutu at one point.
For its final encore, Canadian Brass played Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of a Bumblebee, a fast-paced arrangement that highlighted the extreme talent of the performers and left the audience in happy awe.
The Cayman Arts Festival continues this week with events Thursday at First Baptist and Saturday at Pedro St. James Castle.
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