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Canadian Brass And the CIP

the group

Saturday the 22nd the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic with conductor David Bowden welcomes the Canadian Brass for their season opening concert in Erne Auditorium.

WFIU caught up with the group's youngest member. Trumpet player Brandon Ridenour is now a six year veteran of the Canadian Brass. "But, I joined the group when I was just twenty and still in school at Julliard," says Ridenour. "Although, I very much enjoyed being on the road with the group, I still wanted to finish my degree. So, while we were traveling and the others were getting a bit of rest, I was doing homework."

Although the Canadian Brass is now a venerable forty years old, it's a group that's still evolving especially in the area of repertoire.  "When the Canadian Brass began forty years ago there wasn't much material," observes Ridenour.  "Composers like Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms had done wonderful things for string quartets and piano trios, but very little for brass. So part of the group's early work was in arranging some of that great music for the quintet."

In addition to playing trumpet, Ridenour has also contributed some arrangements of his own.  And he jokes, "If the audience claps real loud, at the end of the concert we'll play my version of ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee.'"

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