Canadian Brass is an icon for classical music listeners around the world. Through its pioneering work, over 500,000 performers have grown up playing out of Canadian Brass books, created with Canadian writers and publishers. Selling disc-to-disc with James Galway, Wynton Marsalis, Emmanuel Ax and Boston Pops Orchestra (their colleagues at the majors), Canadian Brass has sold over a million and a half recordings in the SoundScan era alone.
Armed with very little quality music when they started, the Brass set out to play masterpieces borrowed and newly written. From these efforts, the entire world of brass has now been lifted to be on a par with the string quartet medium. This has been proved by the adding of brass quintet to the potential required compositions for master’s degrees in several U.S. schools of music.
Canadian Brass is the first ever resident ensemble with Sirius Radio in the United States, playing 24-karat gold Conn-Selmer instruments. The group has made over 100 recordings plus several DVDs, and has also appeared on many international TV shows, including Chinese TV last spring for over half a billion viewers! The University of Toronto has just appointed them Artist Group in Residence.