Before I share about today’s topic, I must say “Thank you” to Ray, my most faithful non-family member fan. Ray is a neighbor and writer and when I didn’t publish a blog last week, he actually called me to see if I was o.k. When I assured him that I was, he had some words with me about missing a week. Thank you from the depths of my heart for caring and for the encouragement. You bless me.
So, what is my topic today? Well, Saturday night, Keith and I attended a piano concert in Greenville, SC. Our precious eight-year-old granddaughter went with us. She has started taking piano lessons this year and is truly enjoying them. Kudos to Natalie for attending the two-hour concert and really paying attention.
The concert was performed by “The 5 Browns.” Have you heard of them? They are five siblings, three females and two males between the ages of 27-34, who graduated from Julliard Music Conservatory. It’s an unusual and big deal that they are all Julliard musicians but even more unique is that they are all pianists. In the YouTube video above, you will see that they play five grand pianos at the same time!
Ever the piano tuners wife, I thought about the challenge and time involved for tuning and voicing the five pianos to “match.” Keith often tunes and voices two pianos for concerts but as of today, he has not tuned five for one single event and five “probably picky pianists.” When that day comes, I know he will enjoy the challenge. By the way, the five pianos travel with the Browns for their concerts.
I also wondered how long it took them to develop the ability to play in accurate time with each other. I imagine they have internal metronomes but do they had any “tricks?” Don’t laugh, but I think that the pretty strong and dancing head movements they all used might have been indicators of down beats or something else significant. It was fun to watch one of the women’s pony tail keeping time.
They each began taking piano lessons at the age of three and since there’s only seven years difference between the oldest and youngest, there were five children in one house all taking piano lessons at the same time. How many pianos do you suppose they had? (We have friends with two boys taking lessons and they actually have three of our beautiful Perzina pianos in their home.) Perhaps I can get my “number of pianos in the house” question and others answered in their autobiography entitled, “Life Between the Keys – The (Mis)adventures of the 5 Browns.”
The 5 Browns would surely agree with our Freeburg Pianos motto:
Life is Grand
Joann