Canadian Brass

In the official bio on its website, Canadian Brass claims to have “truly earned the distinction of ‘the world’s most famous brass group.’” Let’s investigate, shall we?

• Canadian Brass started 52 years ago, when friends Chuck Daellenbach and Gene Watts came together to form a brass quintet. (Daellenbach is still in the band today.)

• The group has made more than 130 albums and sold more than 2 million albums worldwide. Their collection of patriotic songs “Stars & Stripes: Canadian Brass Salute America” spent eight weeks in the top 25 of Billboard’s Classical Chart, peaking at no. 2.

• In addition to packing houses throughout the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe, Canadian Brass has toured Australia, the Middle East, the Soviet Union and South America. They were the first brass group from the west to perform in China and the first to play the main stage at Carnegie Hall.

• They’ve performed on “The Tonight Show” and “Today” as well as numerous PBS specials and “Sesame Street.”

• They have nearly 71,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, which is more than any other brass band I could find, unless you count a couple of the smaller, contemporary New Orleans-style brass bands.

Does all of this information prove Canadian Brass is the world’s most popular brass group? Not exactly! But it certainly proves that they’ve been around for a long time, made a lot of music and filled a lot of concert halls and theaters with people who dig their virtuosic performance of brass standards, classical music, jazz, Broadway tunes and pop favorites. They’ll do the same Monday night at Bend’s Tower Theatre.

Canadian Brass: 7:30 p.m. Monday, doors open 6:30 p.m., $37-$57, Tower Theatre, 835 NW Wall Street, Bend, towertheatre.org.