Welcome to Music for Life, enhancing the Armstrong concert experience. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. In today's episode, we will explore the final event coming to Armstrong Auditorium this 2018-19 season, the world-famous Canadian Brass, performing here Tuesday, April 2nd. We also have an exclusive interview with Chuck Dellenbach, the quintet's remaining founding member. And at the very end, I will list the lineup for Armstrong's 2019-20 concert season. So stick around as we spotlight the world's brassiest Canadians today on Music for Life.
We are coming up on the final event of the 2018-19 season at Armstrong Auditorium, and as we discuss that concert today, that also makes this the final episode of this season of Music for Life, our fourth season in total. As our tagline states, we've been enhancing the Armstrong concert experience through these programs, giving some music appreciation basics as relates to each concert. We've discussed so much this season, the innovative string trio Time for Three. We spent a couple episodes on the Mozart Orchestra of New York's All Mendelssohn program with Anna Kiko Myers as the featured violin soloist. We spotlighted the world's oldest, youngest choir ever, the Vienna Boys Choir, in the lead-up to their performance.
this past November. We also spent two episodes on one of the premier period ensembles in the world, the Bach Collegium Japan, and explored the variety of Baroque masterpieces they were performing. We went in-depth into the music for Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake in preparation for the Russian National Ballet's performance in January. We also introduced our listeners to the clarinetist Julian Bliss, his septet, and the tribute to Benny Goodman that they brought here. We spent two episodes on two great symphonic works being presented by the Shanghai Opera Symphony Orchestra, and we spent an episode describing the high-energy show Celtic Nights. I think several of these episodes could be listened to again, even though the concerts have passed, the episodes...
the repertoire and the musical styles in such a way that it would still equip any newcomer to fine art music on how to consume such things. And as I said in our Celtic Nights program, some of these events need more explanation than others and some need very little explanation to sell them to the audience. Celtic Nights was that way and our next event with the Canadian Brass also fits that description. We're going to explore some of their music today from their most recent album, Perfect Landing, as we give a brief history of the organization and a brief introduction to each of its five members. We will also have an interview with the Quintet's founding member who is still going strong with the group.
With an international reputation as one of the most popular brass ensembles today, the Canadian Brass has truly earned the distinction of the world's most famous brass group. Friends Chuck Dellenbach and Gene Watts first came together in 1970 to form a brass quintet, a chamber music setting not entirely new, but never before having garnered the success and storied career Canadian Brass would achieve over the next 40 years. Initially, Gene took on the role of developing new repertoire, while Chuck was the moving force in marketing, publishing, and managing the business. Three empty chairs were quickly filled, and together the group's imagination and consummate musicianship elevated the art of the brass quintet to what it is today. Here was not only an opportunity to explore the possibilities of an all-brass chamber group, but a challenge to bring the sound and the excitement of brass music to new audiences. Masters of concert presentations, the Canadian Brass have developed a uniquely engaging stage presence and rapport with audiences. Each of their concerts will show the full range from trademark Baroque and Dixieland tunes to new compositions and arrangements created especially for them, from formal classical presentation to music served up with lively dialogue and theatrical effects. The hallmark of any Canadian Brass performance is entertainment, spontaneity, virtuosity, and most of all, fun, but never at the expense of the music.
Whatever the style, the music is central and performed with utmost dedication, skill, and excellence. With a discography of over 130 albums and an extensive worldwide touring schedule, Canadian Brass is an important pioneer in bringing brass music to mass audiences everywhere. They have sold well over 2 million albums worldwide, and they continue to score Billboard chart positions, like with their rousing recording of Patriotic Songs and Marches, Stars and Stripes Canadian Brass Salute America, which spent 8 weeks in the top 25 on the Billboard Classical Chart, peaking at number 2. They are touring legends with an enthusiastic fan base. They have played to packed houses everywhere throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe. They have also toured Australia, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and South America. On numerous occasions, Canadian Brass has been invited by the Canadian government to play for visiting heads of states, becoming one of Canada's greatest resources and musical ambassadors. Millions of television viewers have had Canadian Brass in their homes, with appearances on The Tonight Show, Today, and Entertainment Tonight, and recently to more than half a billion viewers for Chinese New Year on China's most popular station. The varied Canadian Brass repertoire features brass standards, as well as a wide-ranging library of
Thank you. far jazzier style. We're going to hear two arrangements, one he called bebop Bach and the other dixie Bach, and they are based on the C minor, prelude, and fugue respectively from the well-tempered clavier book one. I'm going to play a little of the original as recorded on piano so you can appreciate the jazzy arrangements of this prelude and fugue. Here's how the prelude in C minor begins. And here's a little of how the fugue in C minor goes. So again, this is Luther Henderson's arrangements of that prelude and fugue, those two classic piano movements, but they're adapted for Canadian brass in a track titled bebop Bach and another one titled dixie Bach.
That was Dixie Bach. preceded by Bebop Bach, both based on the C minor prelude and fugue from the well-tempered Clavier book one, arranged by Luther Henderson for the Canadian Brass. We just heard the Canadian Brass playing it there in that track from their latest album, Perfect Landing. We are in the midst of discussing the Canadian Brass and their illustrious history. We were just talking about how their existence and launch to popularity has engendered a wide range of original arrangements. Another key characteristic of the group has to do with education. Education plays a key role in the story of Canadian Brass, and each member is uniquely attuned to training the next generation of players. On their travels around the world, they often pause for masterclasses and...
Shalom Aleichem. And we'll play this before greeting each member of the group, so to speak. We just heard Shalom Aleichem from Canadian Brass' most recent album, Perfect Landing. In spite of their storied past and lengthy discography, I wanted to play this latest album because it more accurately represents the group that you'll be hearing at Armstrong Auditorium when the Canadian Brass performs here on Tuesday, April 2nd. That piece we just heard was a traditional Jewish greeting and I thought that would be appropriate before we introduce you to each of the members of the Canadian Brass.
One of the most celebrated trombonists of his generation, Achilles Larmakopoulos, is the trombonist of the Canadian brass. He is in demand as a soloist and has toured extensively throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia, performing and educating in the world's most important venues and institutions. He has also performed with orchestras all around the world. As a recitalist, Achilles has performed in China, Panama, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Greece, United States, and Canada, having been awarded honors at competitions around the globe. At the age of 18, he gave two solo performances at Walt Disney Hall as the grand prize winner of the Pasadena Showcase House Instrumental Competition.
in addition to the five recordings he's made with the Canadian brass. The hornist for Canadian Brass is Jeff Nelson. As his bio says, one of the many Canadian pig farm-raised magician horn players in the world, Jeff has thrilled audiences and mentored students for over 25 years. He recently entered his ninth year touring and recording as solo horn with Canadian Brass. Jeff has also performed concerti with orchestras on six continents and in the horn section of dozens of orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics and the Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Montreal Symphonies. Jeff is founder of Fearless Performance, LLC, a company that focuses on training musicians and entrepreneurs to improve their mental game so they consistently perform their best.
In 2011, he gave his celebrated TED Talk on fearless performance. It's not the presence of our audience that makes us nervous. It's our awareness of the presence of our audience. But ask yourself this, we also choose what kind of awareness to have. If that person watching us was three years old, would we have gotten nervous? A huge Broadway musical fan, Jeff played the complete run of two Broadway shows in New York City that were nominated for Tony Awards. He has also toured with Michael Bolton and Barry Manilow, has recorded with Michael Bublé, and has performed on dozens of movie and video game soundtracks. Jeff most enjoys performing with his wife, mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelson, on recital and orchestral pop series. We've discussed two of the five members to this point. Let's talk about one of the two trumpeters in the group, Chris Coletti. Chris joined Canadian...
Brass in 2009. He received his master's degree from the Juilliard School and his bachelor's degree from the Manhattan School of Music, which he completed in just three years. Chris got his professional start as principal trumpet of the Huntsville Symphony in Alabama. Comfortable in many musical styles, he has performed with a wide range of musicians, ranging from Yafim Bronfman, Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Ricardo Muti to Quincy Jones, Carlos Santana, Gloria Estefan, and Miami Sound Machine. Since joining the group, he has performed hundreds of concerts, TV, and radio appearances around the world, recorded four Billboard chart-topping award-winning CDs, filmed multiple music videos, and arranged a plethora of music that the Canadian Brass has recorded.
So we've discussed three of the five members of this group. Let's take another musical break to hear some more from the Canadian Brass' latest album, Perfect Landing. This is one of the four Spanish culture compositions on the album titled Granada. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. On today's episode, we are exploring the final event coming to Armstrong Auditorium this 2018-19 season, the world-famous Canadian Brass, performing here Tuesday, April 2nd. We also have an exclusive interview coming up with Chuck Dellenbach, the quintet's remaining founding member, and at the very end, I will also list the lineup for Armstrong's 2019-20 concert season. We just heard Granada from the Canadian Brass' most recent album, Perfect Landing. We are also in the midst of our discussion of the five members of the group, and we have two left to discuss. Trumpeter Caleb Hudson is the newest member of the Canadian Brass, having graduated from the Juilliard School with both bachelor...
and Master of Music degrees, acclaimed by the New York Times as brilliantly stylish. Caleb has performed as an international soloist, including a recital that was broadcast nationally on NPR's Performance Today. Caleb is known for his piccolo trumpet mastery of Bach's infamous Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, which we will hear an arrangement of in just a moment. Possessing a wide range of musical styles, his experience ranges from soloing in Carnegie Hall to performing with early music ensembles, even appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Caleb enjoys writing and arranging music for Canadian Brass, having many works performed, published, and recorded. So let's hear that famous or infamous Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, which features Caleb on the piccolo trumpet. You'll hear...
harpsichord along with the Canadian brass, which is played by a former trumpet player from the group, Brandon Riddner. We just heard the famous Brandenburg Concerto performed by the Canadian Brass. That track, from their most recent Perfect Landing album, features one of their trumpeters, Caleb Hudson, on the piccolo trumpet. And joining the brass quintet for that recording was a former trumpet player with the group, Brandon Riddner, playing harpsichord. So we've been discussing each of the five members of the group, and there's one we haven't gotten to yet. I'll give his brief biography, and then we'll get into our interview of this member of the group. Last, but in no way least, is the one founding member of Canadian Brass still performing as part of the quintet, Chuck Dellenbach, tubaist. Chuck has brought music, imagination, and humor to Canadian Brass since the group was formed in 1970, and since it's a Canadian group that's...
. . . . .
Bonist, Gene Watts. Together, they formed this unique brass quintet with Chuck on tuba. For the next 38 years, Gene and Chuck guided Canadian brass to the top of their field. Through thousands of wonderful performances and fantastic opportunities, including two command performances for the Queen of England, Chuck's dialogue during concerts has kept audiences engaged and in stitches for many years, helping to establish a bridge of appreciation for great music of all types to musicians and non-musicians alike. Possibly the most recognized tuba player in the world, having appeared on over 100 recordings, Chuck has performed with many of the greatest musicians and conductors of the last 40 years. The definition of a multitasker, Chuck always has several projects in the works at once.
and somehow keeps track of it all. Among his various projects is a series of 200 brass works published by Hal Leonard, many accompanied by CDs played by music students around the world. He is president of Canadian Brass Publishing as well as Opening Day Entertainment Group, the group's recording label. I was able to sit down with Chuck over FaceTime and talk about his group's illustrious history as well as this upcoming performance coming to Armstrong. And I would love to know about your musical background more as a child. I imagine tuba is not the first instrument that one picks up when they're younger. I guess I'm like sixth or seventh generation musician in my family. My dad is a band director in Wisconsin.
in the United States. And all of the kids, two sisters, we all sang in the church choirs and we played in the band because that's what my dad was doing. It just never was something we had to think over much. It was just guaranteed. My dad conducted three church choirs.
And he would go from the early service to the middle service to the late service. And we had to be in the junior choirs and the senior choirs. And so we tagged along, and that just gave us a really good start. And then as far as picking an instrument, I just had an opportunity to play in the high school band when I was still in junior high because they needed a tuba player. And I stepped up to the plate, and then the die was cast. Yes. So you chose that in junior high, basically, and that's where you stayed in terms of your instrument. Right. And then it was a little later than that, obviously, when Canadian Brass formed, you and Eugene got together. And when did that happen? And talk about the genesis of this group.
Well, for me, right after graduating from college, my first job was the University of Toronto. So I'd come to Toronto and immediately started casting about for other brass players, what people were doing. And I met Gene very early on. In fact, I hadn't even taught my first day before I met Gene. And we compared notes and realized we both had a similar ambition about brass chamber music. And interestingly, it turned out we both had a teacher in common. We'd both gone through the Chicago, Arnold Jacobs, a very famous.
wind teacher. He was the tuba player in the Chicago Symphony, but it was a rite of passage. Every brass player, in fact, woodwinds and singers would make a point of studying with Arnold. So we had that in common, and it was just very simple at that point to compare notes and get started. So it was 1970. And so then you were searching for other brass players to form this quintet. I mean, a brass quintet is, I guess, a somewhat traditional grouping. Is that correct? We inherited the form brass quintet.
The first brass quintet was, in fact, the Chicago brass quintet. They were symphony players and they started way back in 1947. So we feel that's the beginning of the brass quintet era. But when we started in 1970, there were no professional brass quintets making their living playing chamber music and there was no career path whatsoever. So interestingly, we were able to feel like we were on the ground floor of something and that we had a lot of latitude.
to be creative about what we played and where we played and how we approached audiences as compared to, say, the tradition of the string quartet, which was hundreds of years old. And anybody forming a string quartet, they had rules and regulations and they had to play this and they had to play that and they had to do it this certain way. And we just didn't have those restrictions, which gave us a lot of opportunity to experiment and figure out how to, first of all, create an audience for what we love, the sound of brass and the music, and then to figure out how to actually turn that into something we could do on a regular basis. Yeah. And that creative flexibility, that's taken you.
pretty far. Maybe talk about some of the grand highlights, some of your favorite highlights from your group's history. Well, when we started, our ambition was that perhaps we could go out on weekends and maybe play colleges and universities. And like any other endeavor, you climb one hill and of course you see a larger one in front of you and off you go. So we feel we were the only musicians to feel like our way to Carnegie Hall, which is the ultimate test, our way to get to Carnegie Hall was through playing children's concerts. We played hundreds of children's concerts in the early years and we found it was a fantastic laboratory for us because children are very quick to react.
where an adult audience might give you a polite applause and then just not come to your next concert. It takes you forever to find out. With kids, you can find out instantly if what you're doing makes sense or is carrying. So we would experiment. We would play for kids and we'd see how we could get them interested in a Bach fugue, for example, knowing that the attention span in 1970, I think Sesame Street decided it was just under a minute. So how do you get kids to sit still and enjoy and actually maybe cheer at the end of a three or four minute Bach fugue? That was our challenge. So that really gave us a good start.
for approaching audiences in general and how to create a repertoire and so forth. And we did make it to Carnegie Hall. We kind of feel that was the defining moment of brass when we could actually hold forth in the large hall at Carnegie. So that's a major step. Our major international step was when then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent us to China as the first wave of a cultural exchange. So we were the first Western group of any nature to go into China after the Cultural Revolution. So that put us in the international press. So you can never discount that.
And then just the fact that we had, back in that day, CBC Radio and National Public Radio gave us a national, international audience well before we'd even traveled to a lot of these places. That was followed by being signed to RCA Records. And RCA Records, the Red Seal, was a major recording. And that was just unprecedented for a brass ensemble to be rubbing shoulders with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Cleveland Quartet and so forth. Our producer was, in fact, the producer of those ensembles. So those things just couldn't be discounted in the long run. We were very, very lucky.
And your group does an incredible job at mixing very high art. It is very virtuosic execution with being entertaining and humorous. Talk about, I'm sure that's part of your mission as a group, and talk about the importance you see of blending those two things. It seemed to me in looking back and talking to Gene, Gene and I spend a lot of time together to this day. I mean, we're just very close in figuring these things out. But looking back, we never really had a structured plan of saying, now we need to figure out how to play this kind of music for audiences, or we must do this. We did it more from the heart.
What kind of music did we enjoy? What kind of music did we want to take to audiences? And then the test was to play it and see if audiences agreed. In a sense, we looked at it like circles. If you think of all the music we loved and put a big circle around that, and then maybe the music that audiences would respond to put a big circle around that and then find the concentric nature of that. So we found Duvaldi Four Seasons. Audiences loved that. Sometimes we'd play, say, something esoteric from the romantic era out of the orchestra era or something, and you could tell that that wasn't really as interesting or maybe just reminded them of an orchestra playing the same piece. So that would disappear from our repertoire. So by following our own interests...
That took us to all the places you can imagine because brass players played in concert bands and orchestras, jazz bands, stage bands, you know, opera pit. You know, we did all that kind of music. fantastic resource of things that we'd already been acquainted with and loved, and then shared that with audiences. That's fantastic. The program you're bringing to Armstrong Auditorium is very much, has those overlapping circles. And maybe describe a little bit of the arc of the program that we can expect. Well, your concert hall is so gorgeous. I know there was a little concern the first time we played there that perhaps, because we come in from the, we surprise the audience. And if they're listening to this, they won't be surprised. Or if they've seen us, they'll know that we come in from the back. And there was a little concern that perhaps, you know, we're out there with these instruments. Perhaps instruments can damage things like walls or carpets or whatever. So there was a sigh of relief.
that we were very conscious of this and that we were very respectful for our environment. But we do. we do bring things that interest us. We do bring that to audiences. And one is we don't just sit still in chairs and ignore the audience and so forth, which kind of came out of the recital era of the fifties. I think in a sense, we were an antidote to that recital tradition that had built up for some reason that the person on stage was unapproachable and you're not to talk to them or look at them or whatever. So we, we never, we wanted just the opposite. The reason we're even doing this was to share what we love with, with audiences and find that common ground. That's great. Chuck, thanks so much for your time and for talking about.
your history and your philosophy and this upcoming performance. We're really looking forward to it. Well, same here. And we were eager to meet the audience again. You know, you start developing friends. You realize when you come back to a place three or four or five times, pretty soon you start to actually know people. It's not just an audience. It's like real people that become your friends, you know, our family.
becomes the audiences, so we're very eager to get back. Awesome. Well, we feel the same way, and we're looking forward to seeing you. Thanks so much for your time. Okay, bye for now. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. On today's episode, we have explored the final event coming to Armstrong Auditorium this 2018-19 season, the world-famous Canadian Brass, performing here Tuesday, April 2nd. We also just had an exclusive interview with Chuck Dellenbach, the Quintet's remaining founding member. More information about this event and all Armstrong Auditorium events can be found at armstrongauditorium.org. You can follow Armstrong Auditorium on social media, as well as this program on social media at Music for Life PCG.
Before we play one more Canadian brass example, and before we close out this season of Music for Life, I want to give you a brief rundown of the events we will have next season. We open the season on September 12th with an act direct from Italy, the four Italian tenors, in a program titled Viva Italia. Then on November 12th, we present the Zurich Chamber Orchestra with violin soloist and artistic director Daniel Hope in a program featuring Vivaldi's four seasons, plus film composer Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed. On December 3rd, we present a stunning husband-wife team, the Lomasov-Rackers piano duo, in a variety of four-hand works on both one and two pianos. After that, on January 16th, we present local trumpet legend David B. Hooten and his Legends of Dixieland performance. Then on February 13th, we present Mexico's cultural export the Ballet Folklorico de Silvia Lozano in a program titled Fiesta of Color. We're excited to present the Siberian State Symphony Orchestra next on March 4th in a program featuring Rimsky-Korsakov's incredibly popular Scheherazade as well as Tchaikovsky's insanely difficult violin concerto. Later that month, on March 24th, cellist Julian Schwartz comes with his father Gerard Schwartz conducting the Mozart Orchestra of New York. This father-son team will present some great cello orchestral repertoire. And then finally, we end the season on...
April 23rd with the highly acclaimed male chorus, Chanticleer. More information about this new season will be up on armstrongauditorium.org very soon. Okay, to finish off today's episode, we're going to hear a monumental work performed by the Canadian Brass, the final track from their latest album, Perfect Landing. This is the epic Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor by J.S. Bach, considered the Mount Everest of brass chamber music. I hope you enjoy, and I hope to see you soon at Armstrong. You have been listening to Music for Life, a production of KPCG 101.3 on the FM Dial in Edmond, Oklahoma. From the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus, I'm Ryan Malone. Thanks for joining me.