ENSEMBLE KEEPS BRASS POLISHED

In the rather small world of chamber brass ensembles, there exist two schools of thought: to cut up or to play it straight.

On the one hand, there are the zanies like the madcap Canadian Brass, players extraordinaire, but also dancers terrible, and their growing number of imitators/admirers, pratfalling and joking their way around the globe.

On the other hand, there is Britain’s Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. While it is not above a playful, jazzy rendition of a Joplin rag or two, the ensemble sticks to music written exclusively for brass ensembles--or music that sounds as if it could have been.

And therein lies the rub, said Jones, first trumpeter and founder of the ensemble, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year and will appear Monday at 8:15 in the Laguna Beach High School auditorium.

“At the beginning, back in the ‘50s, contemporary composers couldn’t imagine they could actually write something serious for us,” he explained via telephone from London. “They finally came ‘round to the notion that they could write some pretty exciting music for us, and then they started to get excited about getting about it.”

Jones, a witty Londoner, admitted the repertory problem is a serious one for brass ensembles. “You’ve got your (Venetian composer Giovanni) Gabrieli canzonas and the contemporary pieces, but there’s not a whole lot in between. So we, like everyone else, transcribe like mad, where it’s appropriate.”

Where the Philip Jones Ensemble parts company from most of its zany contemporaries is in the type of music it chooses to transcribe--and, Jones said, the way its members play it.

“We do do our best to keep our performance style rather straight,” he said. “That’s the way we learned to play, and the way we feel most comfortable performing. And the music we use isn’t your Mozart or Beethoven symphonies, stuff that really doesn’t translate well. We try to keep things on the up and up.”

Jones pointed to the Laguna Beach program as an example: transcribed Bach harpsichord works and Debussy piano music, chorales by the Tudor English/Flemish composer Orlando Gibbons, modern works by Britishers Jim Parker and Michael Parker--and “Triolet,” a large work by Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Andre Previn.

“Previn wrote us a quintet several years ago and it was a big success,” Jones said. “This new one is bigger--it has eight movements--and, although it’s quite mainstream in the way it sounds, it’s compositionally quite complex. It’s a challenge.”

One challenge that the Jones group has managed to resist is to camp it up a la the Canadians--though Jones acknowledged, rather wistfully, that the cut-ups have undoubtedly enlarged the audiences for brass ensembles.

“It’s a dangerous game to try to emulate (the Canadians’) successes,” he said. “It’s very difficult to follow them up, because they’re so superb. They really can play, you know. But--at the risk of immodesty--I must point out we were the ones who started this business, and we don’t dance.”

In spite of the greater audience awareness of brass ensembles today, there’s still some resistance to all-brass programs, Jones said.

“We still get confused with brass bands, like those miners’ bands that come out of the shafts, wash up and play during the lunch hour,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t mind that, really--just so long as our audiences come to take us for ourselves and for how we’re communicating. Also, we’re lucky; a lot of people have heard of us, and they have found that brass music isn’t really such dreadful stuff after all.”

There are two versions of the Jones Ensemble: a quintet version and a 10-member ensemble, the latter being the edition Laguna Beach will hear Monday. Jones said the two outfits serve different audiences but the same purpose.

“The quintet is, of course, much smaller scale and intimate, for smaller halls and audiences,” he said. “We also tend to play more pieces written specially for us. The 10-man group gives you a bit more volume, a bit more display--it gives us a chance to show off a bit. Not louder, really--just more of a good thing.”

But the ensemble will definitely be leaving its toe shoes in Britain this tour, Jones added.

“We do expect to have some fun, though. We’re all pretty merry lads.”