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The KPAC Blog features classical music news, reviews, and analysis from South Texas and around the world.

The Five Browns Bring Their All-Piano Quintet To Boerne

5 Browns
The Five Browns

In classical circles, a piano quintet is almost always one piano and four instrumentalists (string or wind). The Five Browns are literally a piano quintet -- five Juilliard pianists -- and all family -- two brothers and three sisters! Since being dubbed the "Fab Five" by People Magazine, they have been featured on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, Today, and The Tonight Show.

"It sorta works really, really well for a five piano arrangement, and you don't have to add a lot of notes to it, like some of our other pieces. Some of them are very pianistic and the arrangers have taken liberties with them. But the Rite of Spring has fewer notes per part, and makes it a little easier to balance for us." - Greg Brown on their The Rite of Spring: Part One arrangement by Jeffrey Shumway

They have toured extensively and performed in such venues as the Grand National Theater in China, Suntory Hall in Japan, The Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), Symphony Hall (Chicago) and now The 5 Browns make their debut performance in Boerne, Texas! 

This Friday they will play an outreach concert for 1,000 students, and Saturday perform on the Boerne Performing Arts Society program*. Music will include Mozart, Lecuona, Prokofiev, and John Williams.

*The 5 Browns will be performing with one substitute, Mr. Stephen Beus (a fellow Juilliard student of the Browns), due to Desirae’s pregnancy and birth of her first child.

5 Browns in Flight from John Clare on Vimeo.

John Clare is comfortable behind a microphone, streaming video or playing violin. A former broadcaster for NPR, John has previously worked with Voice of America, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and stations in Kansas, Nevada, California, and Pennsylvania.