Experience this youthful, all-American quintet of brothers and sisters, each a virtuoso concert pianist. The 5 Browns first swept the classical world in 2005 with the release of their self-titled first recording which landed them at the top of the weekly Billboard charts and, at the end of the year, as one of the Top Classical Artists of 2005. With their album No Boundaries, the 5 Browns are already delivering on their dream of waking up classical music and introducing it to the widest, largest and most excited audience they can find.
The “Fab Five” – as People headlined its profile of Ryan, 20 years old; Melody, 21; Gregory, 23; Deondra, 25; and Desirae, 27 – bring together five distinctive and discriminating keyboard talents, honed at New York’s Juilliard School, where for five consecutive years they studied simultaneously. With the advice and direction of their manager Joel Diamond, and their parents, Keith and Lisa, they hit on the idea of casting their lot together as a unique quintet of classical pianists, performing on five pianos and in various ensemble combinations. Their irresistible story has been seen on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. They have been profiled in the pages of The New York Times, People Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Gramophone, Entertainment Weekly, Time for Kids Magazine and Sunday London Telegraph, and the classical critics for The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have hailed their artistry. In the wake of the first album’s release, Entertainment Weekly announced, “This quintet of piano prodigies revamps stuffy classics for the Rachmaninoff-impaired.”
Make no mistake about what the 5 Brown do: they play classical classical music, but not quite as you’ve ever heard it before. And that fresh energy and sound – as their concert performances are proving – is opening the doors to classical music for wider and younger audiences.
After one of the Brown 5 most recent concerts in the U.S. with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Morning News wrote, “Send them out to schools from shore to shore, with piano teachers on hand to sign up students afterward, and the future of classical music will look a lot brighter … the 5 Browns proved that classical music can reach teens and twenty-somethings on their own ground, but without posturing or cheapening the product.”
The Browns present themselves as they really are: young adults with a modern look who love fashion, sports, computer games, dancing and all types of music – most of all, classical. And audiences, especially the kids, are blown away when the five perform in concert. When the 5 Browns sit down to perform on their five Steinway grand pianos … their eyes lock … a silent signal passes between them. And in an instant they are transformed, from “regular” kids to musical dynamos. Flawless in precision and steeped in passion, they invariably stun critics and shatter the preconceptions of those who find classical music inscrutable or intimidating.
© 2009 Spokane Symphony.