Friday Evening we attended a concert by the Canadian Brass held in Sauder Music Hall on the campus of Goshen College. The acoustics of the venue are excellent, but the sightline from the balcony not ideal. When I bought the tickets, there were a few scattered single seats on the main floor; the only places with adjacent seats were the left and right balcony. Once we sat there, we could see why these were available.
The musicians entered through the rear auditorium door playing when The Saints Go Marching In as they processed to the stage.
Of the five performers, we could only see 3 unless we leaned over the railing. Fortunately, when a musician was featured in a piece, he stood out near the edge of the stage which meant we had a view. The men also changed seats if one or two instruments were prominent or had a duet. They took turns making the comments at the microphone; we did in that way see what all of them looked like.
There was a wide variety of music interspersed with humorous remarks. For example, Bach's Well Tempered Clavier had been arranged and could now be called Well Tampered Clavier.
There was only one "dig" at the U.S.A. When they introduced the piccolo trumpets, the first one held up was Canadian and metric they said and "the other was American and you know . . ."
The tuba player at one point did "acrobatics" with his instrument, pulling it through his legs, twirling it around his head, and as he got lower and lower in the notes, sinking to his knees and with one last gasp collapsed on his face. This was done center-front so we were able to take it all in.
It was enjoyable and a nice distraction from the chaos in our country right now. We admired the almost-full bright moon on the drive home.
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