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The Little Tin Box / The 5 Browns

Release Date: 11/06/2020
Label: Steinway & Sons Catalog #: 30166
Composer:  Bedrich Smetana ,  Edvard Grieg ,  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ,  Claude Debussy  ...  Performer:  Deondra Brown ,  Desirae Brown ,  Melody Brown ,  Gregory Brown  ...  Orchestra/Ensemble:  The 5 Browns Number of Discs: 1
Length: 1 Hours 0 Mins.

The musical keepsakes found in The Little Tin Box represent an encounter with childhood memory, a reclaiming of its sweetness and beauty, and finding greater meaning in the light by having survived the dark.

Album Credits:
 Recorded at The Dorothy Young Center for the Arts at Drew University on June 24–26, 2016.
Producer/Engineer/Mastering Engineer: Adam Abeshouse
Executive Producers: Eric Feidner, Jon Feidner
Production Assistant: Renée Oakford
Art Direction: Jackie Fugere
Design: Cover to Cover Design, Anilda Carrasquillo
Illustrations: Hilary Onyon
Photographs: August Miller, UVU Marketing & Communications

Review:
 Read more "Thematically related but somewhat thrown-together musical programs can be a lot of fun to listen to, provided that the audience finds their overall themes congenial. The Little Tin Box is a highly personal presentation by the 5 Browns (Desirae, Deondra, Gregory, Melody and Ryan) of music remembered from childhood and, in the case of these top-quality pianists, likely performed then: each of the five started studying piano at the age of three... The music is mostly plain and simple and is played expertly and without apparent chiaroscuro. The 5 Browns are heard individually as well as in two-piano and five-piano arrangements. The works include Smetana’s Vltava (Die Moldau); Grieg’s Anitra’s Dance from Peer Gynt; Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca from the K. 331 solo sonata and Allegro con spirito from the two-piano sonata K. 448; Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum from Debussy’s Children’s Corner; Emile Waldteufel’s Skater’s Waltz; the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5; The Current, a work written and played by Ryan Brown; Couperin’s Les Barricades Mystérieuses from the second book of pièces de clavecin; five of the 13 Kinderszenen by Schumann; and a delightful (but, in context, somewhat odd) improvisation by Desirae’s six-year-old daughter, Poppy Luch, called I Wish I Could Turn Back into a Kid. The pleasant pastiche feeling of the recording makes specific comments on its contents somewhat irrelevant. The flowing-water material in the Smetana may not sound particularly convincing when heard on five pianos; the very slow start to Rondo alla Turca and the jazzy improvisations within it are scarcely Mozartean (although the movement from the two-piano sonata is first-rate); Beethoven’s Fifth is delivered with high drama and contrasts nicely with the comparative calm of The Current immediately afterwards... The title The Little Tin Box speaks to the concept of opening a tinkly little music box and hearing whatever melodies may emerge from it – a sweet notion, and one that fits this mishmash of a musical mixture well enough."

-- Infodad
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