Fredonia Christmas Pops concert features a quintet of piano virtuosos

Five fine musicians playing five very fine grand pianos all on the same stage: it will be the visual and acoustic marvel when the Rockefeller Arts Center presents “Christmas with The 5 Browns” on Saturday December 11 at 7:30 pm at the King Concert Hall.

Tickets are available at the Fredonia Campus Box Office at Williams Center, by phone at (716) 673-3501 or online.

The 5 Browns – Ryan, Melody, Gregory, Deondra and Desirae – all attended New York’s Juilliard School, the first family of five siblings ever to be accepted simultaneously.

This dynamic program will be a mix of popular and classic holiday favorites including “Carol of the Bells”, music from “The Nutcracker”, “Star Wars: Suite for Five Pianos”, selections from “West Side Story”. “And a really cool” Sleigh ride.

“Christmas with the 5 Browns” is a DFT Communications Pops Series event sponsored by Bahgat & Laurito-Bahgat, Chartered Accountants as part of Lake Shore Savings Season.

The 5 Browns received their first wave of critical attention in February 2002, when People magazine dubbed them the “Fab Five” around the same time they were featured on “Oprah” and “60 Minutes”. The quintet released three CDs, each of which reached No. 1 on Billboard Magazine’s Classic Albums chart.

The New York Post proclaimed, “One family, five pianos and 50 fingers add to the greatest classical music sensation in years… When these kids play Rachmaninov, they’ll make you forget about Marshall amps.

The quintet received extensive media coverage ranging from “The Tonight Show”, “Good Morning America”, “The Today Show” and “The View”, to CNN, “Fox and Friends”, National Public Radio’s Performance Today, as well as the New York Times, Parade, People, Los Angeles Times, Sunday London Telegraph and Entertainment Weekly.

The 5 Browns tour extensively and have performed in many venues, including the Isaac Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall, the Grand National Theater in China, Suntory Hall in Japan, and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia in the United States. , Symphony Hall in Chicago and Alice Tully Hall in New York.

Individually and in collaboration, they have performed solo with orchestras around the world, including the St. Louis Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Orchester de chambre de Paris. .

In addition to touring, the 5 Browns are published writers. Their book, “Life Between the Keys”, a lightweight collection of personal stories, was published by Phoenix Books in March 2009. The group was also featured on a PBS TV special, “The 5 Browns In Concert” which aired on PBS stations across the country.

A highlight for the quintet was a concerto for five pianos commissioned by the famous composer Nico Mühly. Under the direction of Maestro James Conlon, the concerto premiered in 2011 at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.