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The members of Canada's quintessential brass quintet will take the stage at Kay Meek Centre Jan. 17 to perform an energetic evening of classical, jazz and contemporary music. That afternoon, they'll conduct a workshop with a number of music students and faculty from Collingwood School, made possible by The Mailey Rogers Group of ScotiaMcleod.

The energy passed between performers and their audiences is addictive.

Fueling creation and inspiring a reaction, both sides are left feeling fulfilled -- one as a result of being entertained and the other knowing they're the source of that contentment.

"It's like a drug," says Gene Watts, a trombonist who has thrived on that energy during countless nights spent onstage under the lights with enthralled audiences before him.

He founded Canadian Brass, an award-winning quintet with numerous recordings under its belt, with tuba player Chuck Daellenbach in 1970. Watts says it's a privilege to be able to perform, and credits the ensemble's longevity with their acknowledgement of that fact.

North Shore audiences will be able to experience the ensemble's passion for performance when members take the stage for an eclectic night of music at West Vancouver's Kay Meek Centre on Saturday, Jan. 17 at 8 p.m.

Watts says his introduction to music occurred while he was growing up in a musical family in Sedalia, Missouri, the one-time home of ragtime musician Scott Joplin.

"There's still remnants of that sort of thing left there and so I got started in jazz," he says.

He paid for his musical education at the University of Missouri by playing in the Missouri Mudcats, a Dixieland band, and went on to study at the New England Conservatory in Boston. This opened the door to playing in orchestras and he eventually ended up in Canada as a member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. It was there that he was able to bring together similar-minded musicians to found Canadian Brass.

"We did it because we wanted to do it and it was fun for us and we were lucky to get five people very early on that were good players and were interested in doing it," he says. "It was the right thing at the right time and we were very lucky."

Having, for the most part, been trained to sit in the back of an orchestra, being a member of such a small ensemble was a welcome change, allowing a stronger degree of interaction between them and their audience.

"That contact really delighted us all," says Watts.

Interested in ensuring they entertain their audiences, Canadian Brass work hard on their programs and they're very careful about what repertoire they choose. "I think there's two problems that work against a brass quintet, one is almost everything you play can sound the same," says Watts.

To provide listeners with a sense of variety, they endeavour to play a variety of pieces. "The other thing is we only play music that we love," says Watts.

Those interests are evident in the lineup for their upcoming West Vancouver concert that promises to be an incredibly diverse evening. They're referencing some of their newer albums in their program, including Bach, which was one of their releases in 2008.

"We wanted to show off some of those pieces," says Watts.

A Glenn Miller medley, an opera by Peter Shickele and jazz works by Luther Henderson are also on the bill.

In addition to entertaining, members of the Canadian Brass also devote energy to educating and often work with up and coming players. When they're in West Vancouver, they'll be conducting a workshop, made possible by The Mailey Rogers Group of ScotiaMcleod, with a number of Collingwood School music students and faculty. The Mailey Rogers group has also provided tickets for the workshop participants to attend the ensemble's local performance.