While it’s always nice to get a visit from a neighbor, a performance by the Canadian Brass quintet will be more than nice, it should be spectacular.

Our neighbors from the north, the “Kings of Brass,” as the Canadian Brass is touted by the Ottawa Citizen, perform their holiday show, “Christmas Time Is Here!,” 7 p.m. Dec. 18, Miller Symphony Hall, Allentown.

Known for a dedication to brass music and fun performance style, Canadian Brass has toured the world for more than 40 years, bringing the joys of brass music to audiences large and small. The December tour includes stops in Utah, Iowa, Nebraska, California, Arizona, Illinois, Virginia and South Carolina.

The Canadian Brass has appeared on “The Tonight Show,” “Today” and “Entertainment Tonight.” They were guest artists on “Evening at Pops with John Williams and the Boston Pops,” “Beverly Sills’ Music Around the World,” PBS specials and with many symphony orchestras.

This holiday season, trumpet player Chris Coletti is especially excited to bring new and classic pieces to brass lovers of the Lehigh Valley.

“The world loves Vince Guaraldi’s ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ and it’s relatively new to our repertoire so we’re happy to bring it out,” says Coletti in a phone interview. “Our former trumpet player, Brandon Ridenour, wrote some arrangements from the movie that we’re excited about and I wrote a combination of a Bach cantata that was turned into one of his partitas and combined it with ‘Carol of the Bells.’”

The performance will also feature classical pieces that have made Canadian Brass world-famous. One of these is Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. Typically played on the piccolo trumpet, Coletti says that the piece is notoriously difficult especially for a brass ensemble but it is always beautiful to experience.

It becomes very challenging to transpose such music for a brass group because brass music is so new. Well, it’s relatively new considering how long music has been performed. Coletti explains that the romantic period of Brahms and Beethoven coincided with the popularity of orchestras when brass instruments were first evolving. Composers didn’t include brass instruments in their works and the ones that did certainly didn’t compose brass for orchestras. Almost every classical piece that Canadian Brass plays has to be adapted for the ensemble.

“Some of the world’s most famous composers were writing music when brass instruments hadn’t evolved to play chromatically and they had a limited range of notes before the bell was invented for the instruments.

“The only exception was Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote the cantata that we’ll play. So, the founding Canadian Brass members [Chuck Daellenbach and Gene Watts] searched for the greatest music they could find regardless of instrumentation and adapted it for the ensemble. We play them to add value and enhance each piece and bring it to life on a whole new level.”

The Allentown concert includes: “I Saw Three Ships,” “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” “Glenn Miller Christmas,” “Für Elise,” “Dreydel Variations” and “Tribute to the Ballet.”

Watts, who played trombone, no longer tours with the ensemble, but Daellenbach has remained with the group on the tuba since 1970 and is now accompanied by Coletti and Caleb Hudson, trumpets; Bernard Scully, horn, and Achilles Liarmakopoulos, trombone. Colette has been playing with the group since 2009 and says that the beauty of the group’s sound lies in the love that each member has for the group.

“Everyone adds their own unique sounds and their own set of interests. That infiltrates the sound we make and the music we play. We were all fans of the quintet growing up because they were so well established by the time any of us were born,” Coletti laughs. “So, we all have this glorified image in our minds of what Canadian Brass should be and it unifies us on many levels.”

Copies of the Canadian Brass’s new CD, “Christmas Time is Here,” are expected to be available at the concert.

Tickets: Miller Symphony Hall Box Office, 23 N. Sixth St., Allentown; allentownsymphony.org; 610-432-6715