CANADIAN BRASS HAS COMIC SIDE

The concert demeanor of the Canadian Brass is living proof that musical slapstick did not perish with the late Spike Jones. In what other chamber ensemble will you see a middle-aged trombone player pirouetting in a tutu to transcribed Tchaikovsky, or hear a tubist essay the “Flight of the Bumblebee” in 35 seconds? And what other ensemble lists Peter Schickele--the demi-genius behind P.D.Q. Bach--as its favorite contemporary composer?

Of course, this brass quintet is not mere tomfoolery. They have just recorded J.S. Bach’s “The Art of Fugue,” Western music’s apogee of contrapuntal complexity, and a few years back they joined forces with the brass players of the august Berlin Philharmonic to make a recording of Gabrieli’s Venetian brass music.

“It’s like a Shakespeare play,” explained the group’s trombonist, Gene Watts, “not all tragedy, but not all comedy. Our concern is how many people we can attract to brass quintet music. When we play Bach, we try to make it the best Bach we can.”

Attracting audiences is the name of this quintet’s game, and in breadth of appeal they rank at the top of their league. “We aim not only for chamber music and symphony buffs, but for disenfranchised baby boomers tired of listening to loud rock music,” he added.

A typical Canadian Brass concert includes a mix of comedy, choreography and humorous patter between selections. When asked to respond to the critics’ complaint that they are too much show-biz and not enough serious playing, Watts responded: “We can accept this criticism from the critics, but we hope the audience doesn’t feel this way.”

This year the Canadian Brass is slated to play 130 concerts and has made four recordings.

San Diego audiences will have the opportunity to hear the Canadians in concert Tuesday night at Symphony Hall, the grand finale of the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s successful downtown Celebrity Series.

With the Canadian Brass, not everything is as it seems. For one thing, only one of the players, trumpeter Frederic Mills, is actually Canadian. “It’s like hockey--you go where you get the best job, or in the case of music, if you even get a job,” Watts said.

Tubist Charles Daellenbach and Watts, both Americans, were working in Toronto when the group was formed. “I was playing in the Toronto Symphony and Charles was teaching at the University of Toronto when the group started,” said Watts. Oddly, the Canadian-born Mills was playing in New York City at the time. Watts added somewhat apologetically that the original French horn player was also Canadian.

Although four of the original quintet members are still with the group, keeping a French horn player has remained a challenge. The latest occupant of that position is David Ohanian, a founding member of the younger Empire Brass Quintet. When asked if the Canadians stole him from the rival quintet, Watts answered diplomatically, “Well, I had known David from the New England Conservatory.”

At one time the Canadian Brass thought they had a mission to bring 20th-Century Canadian music out of obscurity. “We did more (Canadian music) at first, until we found it didn’t do us much good. On our first European trip we took a program of all Canadian contemporary music, but the composers had not captured the essence of contemporary music for brass. Just because it was Canadian did not make it a valid program,” said Daellenbach.

Unlike string quartets, which can choose from composers ranging from Haydn to Bartok, brass quintets have a much narrower vein of music to mine. “We have found the baroque and Renaissance quite durable for brass music,” Daellenbach said.

In their Symphony Hall concert, they will play three of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” originally composed as a set of violin concertos.

“Maybe the New Age composers and the neo-Romantics will turn into a Golden Age for brass composition,” Watts said. “This has to come about in stages: first, creating an awareness for brass--which I think we have done--and second, the composers’ seeing the brass quintet as a legitimate enterprise.”