Canadian Brass goes all-Canadian on new recording

The Canadian Brass is living up to its name on its latest recording, Canadiana. Founding member Chuck Daellenbach (tuba) and Jeff Nelsen (horn) talk about why and how the world’s most well-known brass ensemble created this all-Canadian album.

How does this album reflect the transformation of the Canadian Brass throughout the years? 

Daellenbach: “We realize this is the first recording that was entirely Canadian and Canadian Brass. We've been playing German, South American and American music. This is the first 100 percent Canadian album. That is the evolution of the group, and it seems that the quality of playing is sky high.” 

How are these popular works arranged?

Nelsen: “We have a genius arranger in the group, composer Brandon Ridenour. We were discussing what our favorite Canadian songs were for longer than a year or two, and we thought we should do these tunes. We finally found a space to do it. We collected a list of our top 200 tunes and started passing them to Ridenour who started sending charts.

“He would disappear after concerts and then, all of a sudden, have a new chart to try. The album is an amazing weaving of Canadian Brass style and ideas with well-known Canadian music. The music also had to survive the test of the lack of lyrics. The pieces have incredible lyrics and an amazing story, but the music's pretty good, too, with the lyrics that worked.”

Which pieces did each of you contribute to the album? 

Daellenbach: “I'd go one step further. We picked our favorite music artists. I'm really enjoying deadmau5. He is a unique artist who created a place for electronic music. They even created an award at the Grammys because of his success. Everybody would expect when you see deadmau5, you're going to hear something pretty pointless and electronic sounding. But it's probably the most smooth and beautiful brass piece. The underlying music is so strong, and I think we display deadmau5 in a different perspective than people would normally think of him. We're hoping that he agrees that this really shows the sensitive and creative side of his wonderful artistry.” 

Nelsen: “We get to perform it with double quintet. It's just an amazing brass choir piece. I chose k.d. lang because I'm from Alberta, like her. She studied with someone who sang with my parents and that connection goes way back, which is why we are playing ‘Constant Craving.’ It's just such an amazing song, and there's an accordion!”

Why did it take so long to celebrate Canadian artists as the Canadian Brass?  

Daellenbach: “From my point of view, I started realizing that we grew up as a group. We grew up with these artists in our environment. We certainly weren't collaborating directly with them, but we were always doing similar things, and we really felt that they were a part of our soundscape as we were growing. We wanted to highlight the lifetime of our ensemble, which is why there are current artists like Drake and deadmau5 alongside earlier artists like Joni Mitchell.

“This is our heritage, as well. You can take a piece by Bach that's very wonderful and dress it up with new clothes. We can do the same thing with pop music that people are aware of and might be slipping out of the domain. Classical has an opportunity to really preserve music and, in a way, give it a new function. Canadian people might not know that it's Canadian music until we mention it.” 

What was the most difficult piece to perform? 

Daellenbach: “The piece by Rush. The notes we put in that are rushed. We're playing it faster than Rush as a challenge. It's quite amazing and our guitarist friend Sean Kelley, who can play about everything a guitarist can, helped us out. He was really our connection to get the feeling and sounds in order to bring the mood of the piece alive. We were just playing the notes. That was a challenge for me.” 

Nelsen:  “Our first track, ‘Je Me Souviens,’ by Laura Fabian, which we have been playing on our tour in Europe, is the most difficult. It's such a gorgeous lyrical piece, and the way Ridenour has us weaving in and out of each other's sounds is beautiful. Everything is such a wonderful challenge as a classical musician. To bring that French style in with the pacing of that tune at the climax is just a really nice challenge. We were pleasantly surprised by the response from the European audience. They just loved the piece.” 

Resources

Canadian Brass — Canadiana (Amazon)

Canadian Brass — Canadiana (Linus Store)

Canadian Brass (official site)