Canadian Brass

Sunday October 13th,  Frank, Alex, and I went to a matinee performance by the Canadian Brass at our local Bankhead Theatre. Before buying the tickets I checked out the link  provided by the ticket seller and listened to a few lively You Tube videos. A particular toe-tapping number was the song America from the musical West Side Story. About 45 second into the video, the tempo gets peppy. Using the rousing video as a sample, I'd bought three tickets. I must admit the group of five men made a fun entrance playing their instruments as they marched across the theatre and up onto the stage. This was going to be good!

There was no program, however, so we did not know what songs were going to be played. The brass quintet began by playing lengthy compositions from Mozart, Bach, and Brahms, while we hopefully waited for some peppier choices later in the program. Unfortunately, their overall repertoire was too classical and not popular enough for our tastes. They did play two songs from the Beatles, Eleanore Rigby, which I knew, and Blackbird , which was totally foreign to me. Our spirits were sagging and we were doubtful of, but hopefully wishing for, a zestier second half. They did play Tuba Tiger Rag (hold that tiger... ), a bit jazzier. The song had a bemusing component where the tuba player held a B♭ note continuously while rotating the huge tuba 360°, only almost dropping it once. The group made efforts to introduce levity into their performance, noting their red/white Dr. Seuss style striped socks, on sale of course in the lobby.

Then in the second half the audience was asked who was the most famous composer of movie music scores. Now I was getting energized. OK wait for it. Finally, now maybe stuff I know... music by John Williams perhaps... Jaws theme, Olympic theme, Star Wars theme. Nope, not to be. The famous composer they named, Canadian of course, was Michael Kamen composer for Die Hard movie themes. Even after I played the music from the Bruce Willis movie, I still did not recognize the melody and it is certainly not memorable. But, even more obscure, The Canadian Brass did not play the "famous" Die Hard music, instead playing Quintet, a special piece custom-composed for them by Michael Kamen. Quintet was a total snore.

Overall, the performance was dull, but Alex did not act out nor try to leave, instead sitting quietly throughout. After each selection the five guys stood up and took bows, singling out the musician among them who had been featured in a solo. After    every    selection! This practice certainly lengthened the performance time. Were they excellent, highly-skilled musicians? Yes, certainly; that was obvious. But because of the song choices I have to philosophically look upon the show as a mediocre semi-comedic, cultural experience.