Denis Colwell and the River City Brass Band heralded the yuletide season with a festive concert at Heinz Hall on Thursday night. Performing mostly medleys of Christmas holiday favorites, the ensemble was joined by four area high school choirs.

The musical highlight of the evening was "Lascia ch'io pianga" from Handel's opera "Rinaldo." The band achieved a great tonal balance in this well-crafted arrangement. The tuba pedal points and trumpet's upper tessitura were easily distinguished, nicely filling out the band's homogenous texture.

Principal tubist Carson Mc-Teer displayed his instrument's upper register in a swing-band styled arrangement of "Jingle Bells." He then showed off his beatboxing abilities (the art of producing vocal percussion) in a comical portrayal of "The Little Drummer Boy."

Drew Fennell demonstrated both his instrumental and singing talents in David Gedris' arrangement of the holiday standard "Sleigh Ride." The arrangement featured four trumpets, but Fennell's overamplified voice frequently drowned out these featured parts. That's actually quite a feat, even with the aid of amplified reinforcement.

Unfortunately, the amplification was consistently too loud throughout the evening. This became especially obvious in former County Executive Jim Roddey's reading of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," set to music composed by Fennell. The ensemble realized Fennell's very inventive opening with superb timbral color. Roddy's exuberant narration of Clement Moore's text however was marred by the painfully loud amplification (at moments, I had to cover my ears).

The amplification also hindered the musicality of the 300-voice choir's first medley, "A Christmas Fantasy." Instead of reinforcing the choir's volume (which is the artistic goal of the sound engineer) the amplification bolstered the choir so much that the spatiality of the ensemble was lost. Standing behind the band and spanning the width of Heinz Hall's stage, the choir's sound should have reached the audience from a low and wide aural perspective. Instead, its a capella "First Noel" seemed to emanate directly from the ceiling mounted center speaker, resulting in a chilly timbre and an artificially high and narrow acoustic angle.

I am glad to say that for the choir's final pieces, especially in its well-prepared "Seasonal Sounds," the level of amplification improved. Its dynamic balance with the band was more musical and the choir's sound was wider and warmer, a testament to the training each of the four high school choirs received from its director.