Scotsman Bob Ross has every reason to blow his own trumpet
Good things come in small packages; in fact, sometimes extraordinary things do. Bob Ross, at 158 cm, is one such package. The Scotsman is founder, conductor and heart and soul of Bavaria’s beloved Blechschaden brass ensemble. Loosely translated as “fender bender” or “damaged metal resulting from a vehicular accident,” the wordplay of Blechschaden hints at the ensemble’s wide experimental repertoire and ingrained sense of humor. In fact, the ensemble’s 11 players are about as far from “damaged” as they can be: all members of the Munich Philharmonic, Blechschaden musicians are, without question, world class.
The opportunity to experience a Blechschaden performance is something no Münchner should pass up. Half concert, half comedy routine, audiences alternately find themselves crying tears of laughter and soulful sentiment as the ensemble soars through renditions of everything from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 to Queen’s We Will Rock You. Between numbers Ross entertains with jokes. Clad in his Unterhaching fan scarf and tuxedo tails, Ross makes jabs at everything from Austria to his personal passion for the local soccer underdogs. “Blechschaden makes music for everyone. We’re about moving people,” sums up Ross. It all started as a whim early in 1984. “A friend of mine owned a music store in Glasgow. He insisted I buy sheet music from him since I had a good job with the Munich Phil. So, I ordered some brass ensemble music and asked the guys in the section to stick around at one of the rehearsal breaks to play through it,” recounts Ross about the birth of Blechschaden. Before long, the ensemble was playing at cafés in Schwabing and at private parties. More than 20 years later Blechschaden now has a cult following, which includes doormen, dignitaries and just about everyone in between. They give 50 concerts a year and have performed the world over.
When asked about his own beginnings, Ross jokes about the neighborhood of his youth in Kirkcaldy, Scotland: “If anyone on my street paid the rent, the police would come around to find out where they’d gotten the money.” The son of a coal-mining euphonium player, Ross followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the coal-miners’ brass band at age 11. He started on tenor horn and later began playing French horn, gathering experience in the competing brass bands of the working class north.
The German-speaking world always held a certain appeal for Ross, as well. As a promising French horn student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Ross began taking German-language courses at the Goethe Institute. Through a twin-city program, Ross secured summer jobs in Ingolstadt, working at a steel factory, a wood yard and eventually counting money at the Sparkasse. “That was after my German got better,” chuckles Ross.
But it was a twist of fate during his first summer in Ingolstadt that determined Ross’ destiny in Germany. One weekend, as he tried hitchhiking to Nuremberg, Ross ended up wandering across fields towards the lights of a nearby village. There, the 18-year-old stumbled upon the village pub and was taken to a beer festival by local youths. “I awoke the next morning in the family’s guesthouse. It was 7 am and there was a bus outside the door heading up to Nuremberg. They put me on it. On the bus everyone was in Lederhosen, drinking beer and singing along to an accordion. It was the Dörndorf village excursion and I obviously didn’t belong.” One of the Bavarian revelers, Peter Spaet, could speak some English and struck up a conversation with the wayward Ross. Before the day was out, Ross had been adopted by the villagers of Dörndorf. Fate had taken hold, and Ross spent the next three summers living with the Spaet family, “I prepared my audition to the Musikhochschule in Cologne in their utility room. It’s been 33 years, and I still have deep ties to Dörndorf.”
After completing his studies in Cologne, Ross took orchestra positions in Wiesbaden and Essen before winning the audition at the Munich Philharmonic and settling in Bavaria. As part of Munich’s thriving performing and recording scene in the early 1980s, Ross played everywhere and soon met his wife, Jane, at an orchestra recording session. “She was an oboist with the Munich Symphony and I was helping out on the horn. I told her if she promised not to wear high heels that we could go out together sometime.” And the rest is history.
