Five Browns count blessings

Akron Beacon Journal - October 19, 2008

by Elaine Gureglan

The Five Browns are all about bringing in a younger audience, but their approach might be familiar to the older listeners Wednesday night at E.J. Thomas Hall, when the pianists perform in the Tuesday Musical series./p>

The Juilliard-trained siblings have been a hit since releasing their first five-piano CD, titled The 5 Browns , in 2005. That release and two subsequent CDs spent time in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Classical chart. International touring ensued.

They key to success for the Five Browns has been keeping things lighter, the way soloists and symphony orchestras programmed their concerts a couple of generations ago. Anyone longing for a concert of recognizable music would be at home with this program, which includes excerpts from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, one of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, selections from The Planets and so on.

Nobody composes for five pianos, so the siblings have had arrangements of orchestral and piano music made especially for them.

The five musicians spoke by phone last week from their parents' home in Alpine, Utah, where they keep five pianos and meet to rehearse. All of them live within 30 minutes of their parents.

They like to do the interviews together, rather than separately, their father, Keith, explained in an e-mail. While they have professional management, he still helps out with many of the details of the careers he and his wife, Lisa, have supported from the begining.

During our conversation, Desirae,29; Deondra,28; Gregory,26; Melody,24; and Ryan, 23, took turns answereing questions, identifying themselves each time. Just back from nearly three weeks touring in Japan, they were glad to be reunited with their spouses. (The three sisters are married, and Ryan was married in August.)

With their success, they could be playing more, but they have cut back to about 100 performances a year. They try not to be on the road more than two weeks without being home for at least that amount, Deondra said.

In performance, the Browns play in a variety of combinations, from solos to all five playing at once. Here's how a typical Five Browns concert goes, Desirae said: "We try to kind of chat with the audience in between the peices and talk about our feelings and impressions and a little bit of the history of the piece. Kind of like at pop concerts: you just get to know each other. Then at the start of the second half, we'll take just a few minutes and take some questions from the audience. Hopefully, people will be relaxed and have fun."

Their model for speaking to the audience is Leonard Bernstein and his concerts for children, Desirae said: "He was speaking to children, but it wasn't so simplified that the adults weren't getting something out of it, too."

Reaching out to people who might not usually go to classical concerts is important to these five musicians, Gregory said.

"A lot of people feel like they can't go to a classical concert because they don't undrerstand the etiquette, or they think that people might look down on them for not understanding the music very well. But we understand that even though there are people out there who don't know classical form, you don't really have to understand that sort of stuff to get something out of the music." he said.

"We don't mind if people come more casually dressed. We on stage are not in tuxes and ball gowns and all that. We're dressed, like-what is it?-cocktail attire for the first half. The second half, we'll dress down. Some of us are even in jeans."

Often the Browns do out-reach events when they tour. The event originally planned in conjunction with the Tuesday Musical performance was canceled because it is a testing week for Akron Public Schools and students were not available to participate.

Family and religious faith are at the center of this group's success. Their parents raised the children in Texas and Utah. Each child started to play the piano at an early age, and when it was time for college, their parents helped Desirae and Deondra set their sights on major conservatories, including Juilliard, the most famous of them all. The younger siblings soon followed, starting in Juilliard's preparatory program.

The four oldest siblings earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Juilliard. Ryan, the youngest, studied at Juilliard's pre-college program and then at Manhattan School of Music. He left the school before graduating to start his performing career.

Playing the piano was always the choice of each sibling, Ryan said,"Our parents helped us through the hard times, where we would threaten to quit here and there, usually during our teenage years. They always left it up to us and asked us,'Is this really what you want to do?' We would say, 'yeah.' Once it came down to really quitting, we couldn't let the piano go." he said.

The siblings were lucky to have parents who were so supportive that at one point, piano lessons cost more than the monthly house payment, Ryan said.

Famous for its high standards, Juilliard can be tough on the ego. For Melody, having siblings there, and having Gregory in many of the same classes, was an emotional buffer.

"There were so many times when I'd come back from a lesson that I didn't think went very well and I'd be crying or something, and my siblings would know exactly how I felt, and they would know exactly what to say to help me from being so down on myself," she said.

During the college years, there's a lot of pressure on you to keep up. Juilliard is such-there are so many high quality students there, you definitely want to be near the top. You're always kind of striving to be there.

"But for the most part, you have to do what you are individually doing and you have to block everything else out and be like,'This is all about me, and I am going to work my hardest.' I definitely think we were support for one another."

Juilliard students are encouraged to learn how to speak to audiences, a trend for some years now at concerts. Public speaking came easier to the Browns because of their religious background as Mormons, said Desirae and Melody. The Mormon church doesn't use hired clergy; members of the church take turns running the services.

"Even as children, you get up, like as an 8-year-old, you give a little three minute speech or lesson in your primary class. As you get older, as teenagers and then young adults, every once in a while, it comes around to your turn to teach the class or give the sermons. So it gets you comfortable with preparing what to say and trying to connect with people in that way. It did serve us well," Desirae said.

When the Five Browns tour, they don't work on Sundays, and they try to go to church, Melody said. In addition, they'll often participate in Sunsay "firesides," religious speaking engagements. "Usually we'll open up about our faith and what music means to us on a spiritual level," she said

What's ahead for the Five Browns?

They're working on commisioning concerto for five pianos and orchestra, though it's too early to give details. They are booking concert dates "well into 2010," Deondra said.

No one has children yet, but that's probably in the future, too, Deondra said.

"As we get into different stages of our lives, we relize that the schedule will continue to change and evolve to meet each one of our needs, but I think as a group, we're still really wanting to perform together, at least for a while, so we'll kind of see how it goes," she said.

"As long as people are still wanting to hear us perform, I can't deny them that....We're definitely haveing a good time doing it."