MUSIC REVIEW : Canadian Brass: a Musical Shtick : The gags flowed as easily as the melodies when the group appeared at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. Other ensembles mix both, but not as well.

The Canadian Brass routine can seem pretty tired these days, at least to someone who has seen and heard it a few times. But the group apparently could do no wrong for the audience at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Friday.

Actually, the worst thing about the Canadian Brass may be its influence. Many such groups now feel called upon to include musical-joke arrangements and vaudeville shtick in their acts. The trouble is, none of them do it nearly so well as the Canadian Brass.

For one thing, the Canadians’ spoken material is exceedingly well written and expertly delivered. Tubist Charles Daellenbach’s introduction to Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, for instance, is worthy of Monty Python. And if the whole “Carmen” routine--complete with women’s wigs, bull horns, toreador and rose--seems hopelessly adolescent, the players bring it off with aplomb.

They also still play very well. Through their cavorting they never had ensemble problems--the music always flowed easily. Their warm, unhurried reading of a Gabrieli canzona, the players dispersed throughout the hall, was perhaps the most impressive.

Elsewhere, too, as in the polished arrangements of “Ballin’ the Jack,” “Sentimental Mood” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” the players revealed a fluency and stylistic confidence that imitators cannot match.