Big, bold Canadian Brass brings holiday spirit to life

Once you’ve heard The Canadian Brass play Christmas music, you know Christmas is here. With a tuba, French horn, trombone and two trumpets, the holiday is right in your face. Last night, at the Maine Center for the Arts, the quintet horned in on the season in a most unforgettable, enjoyable and long-lasting way.

Halfway through this concert, which included selections by Handel, Bach, Mozart and Gershwin, it suddenly seemed as if all songs in the history of music were somehow really meant to be played on brass instruments. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor was filled with truly inspired moments and left you hanging on every phrase. You somehow forgot it was brass — which can seem so abrasive — and realized it WAS brass — which eventually seemed like a perfectly normal, if not brilliant set of instruments.

Anyone who knows the shtick of this good-time group — Frederick Mills, Ronald Romm, David Ohanian, Eugene Watts and Charles Daellenbach — knows that classical music is only one part of its repertory. There were also pieces by David Brubeck and lots of holiday carols, as well as Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (arranged for brass), which regained popularity in 1986 as a theme song for the film “Platoon.”

There was even a sing-along with “Silent Night,” and too-funny tuba player Daellenbach actually melted by folding himself in a manner amazingly reminiscent of Oz’s Wicked Witch (but without the smoke and trap door) in a hot version of “Frosty the Snowman.”

The great thing about The Canadian Brass is that, no matter what type of music these top-notch musicians play, it is interesting and bright. For musicians whose forte is essentially classical, they cross over easily and skillfully into lots of styles. Plus they offer the added pleasure of a lively repartee with the audience. These guys are funny and intelligent in a manner that combines public radio’s Peter Schickele with Victor Borge and the Blues Brothers.

And it works in a big, bold way because you walk away hearing the sounds of the instruments in your head for a long time, and thinking the holidays will, indeed, be merry and bright if all your Christmases are brass.