If the musicians in the River City Brass Band perform like a fine-tuned Italian sports car, what role does artistic director Denis Colwell serve? Colwell's punch line: He's the band's air bag.

True to form, the band's Thursday night concert at the Byham Theater included spoken and musical jokes throughout. Often at his own expense, Colwell balanced the verbal laughs by bringing out the band's stellar tone and dynamic range.

Principal tubist Carson McTeer is proving to be a great asset to the band. Not only is his tuba playing exemplary -- he makes the instrument speak clearly throughout its wide register -- but also he has the rare ability to mix humor and music successfully.

After his virtuosic variations on "Grandfather's Clock," McTeer gave a lively performance of "Play That Country Tuba, Cowboy!" Essentially a narrative about a classical tuba player in a country bar in the vein of Charlie Daniels' violin feature, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," McTeer's polished performance of "Cowboy" was genuinely presented, without allowing the character piece to become too gimmicky.

Colwell brought out the best in the band as a whole in Keith Wilkinson's interesting arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Capriccio Espagnol." The balance throughout the performance was artfully realized.

Arranging and maintaining a brass band's tonal balance is not an easy task, and the opening arrangement of Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" brought some of the pitfalls into focus. The band never quite got the music to achieve the sense of lift-off that makes this piece resonate. William Rimmer's arrangement came off a bit bottom heavy, and the result was a ponderous motion through the temporal fluctuations characteristic of a rhapsody. His quirky use of the triangle did more to distract from the band's texture than to add to it.

As part of Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary, the brass band will present a new composition by seven Pittsburgh-based composers throughout 2008. Carson Cooman's three-movement "Pittsburgh Rhapsody" was the first commissioned work to receive its premiere through this ambitious project. Cooman's compositional style in "Rhapsody" relied on clear harmonic material and formal organization. Framed by declamatory music for the full ensemble, "Tributaries" held a timbral shift in its lyrical middle section for the horns and euphoniums. Drew Fennell's flugelhorn and Matthew Murchison's euphonium set the warm tone of the second movement's "Memorial Song." The brass band's commissioning project continues in April with a new work by Mike Tomaro.