Canadian Brass emphasizes entertainment at Jesse

Canadian Brass flexes its funny bone for Jesse audience.

By Trevor Eischen

Published Feb. 2, 2009

Sitting down in a balcony seat at Jesse Auditorium waiting for Canadian Brass, one might expect to see a typical brass quintet with a repertoire of 15th and 16th century music, something that isn't usually a hit with most audiences.

Surprisingly, the performance included jazz, contemporary concert music and even popular songs. The show was littered with dry Canadian humor, exceptional music and originality. It ran like a comedy show, but with brass music.

The group, which features Joe Burgstaller and Ron Romm on trumpet, Jeff Nelsen on French horn, Eugene Watts on trombone and Charles Daellenbach on tuba, played pieces by Vivaldi, Glenn Miller and Giovanni Gabrieli, among other composers.

Daellenbach did most of the talking in between pieces and his comedic touch added extra flare to the structure of the performance, creating a show within a show. During Gabrieli's "Canzona," his fellow band members informed him the song didn't call for a tuba, so he walked down a row of seats and found a place to sit next to two audience members.

Act one's repertoire included works from their newest album titled Bach and ended with selections from the album High Society.

Nelsen then took the spotlight with a stunning horn solo from Samuel Barber's "Adagio." Before the piece, Nelson jokingly remarked for a song to be more beautiful, it needed more horn (to the rapturous applause of fellow horn fans). Meanwhile, his band mates faced away to snub the horn's egotism. Once the laughter had receded, the players were back to business. Nelsen, in an astounding fashion, proved his versatility on the horn.

What followed was something of a rarity. Watts entered stage right, wearing a black cowboy hat and a red bandana. He then started to detail the upcoming song, explaining how it was an opera but with two beneficial exceptions. One, there was to be no singing. Two, it was only going to last ten minutes. As he started to narrate the story, the trombone, horn and tuba started playing the background music of an old western movie.

Watts explained how the inspiration for their "brass opera" came from the movie "Gunsmoke" and appropriately named their piece "Hornsmoke." The comedy that pursued was nearly indescribable. Watts was the father of Burgstaller's character, awkwardly attired in a bonnet and apron. The charming cowboy Nelsen lured Burgstaller with his horn playing and as the two flirted with their brass as Watts barged into the scene and aimed his trombone at Nelsen like a shotgun. The two were forced to marry under Daellenbach, who was a tuba-playing priest. All is well until B-Flat Bart, played by Romm, disrupts the ceremony and takes Burgstaller to be his own. He twirls his trumpet like a Colt revolver, and, in the end, shoots all of the characters.

Watts, an MU alumnus, played his favorite song "When the Saints Go Marching In" injected with parts of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus." It was a bizarre but humorous combination of baroque elegance and Dixieland swing.

The entire show was littered with dry Canadian humor, exceptional music and originality.