It sounds like the lead-in to a punch line: Five piano- playing Mormons walk into the Met and . . .
But it’s no joke. The 5 Browns are making their Metropolitan Museum debut today, filling the auditorium stage with five Steinway grands — one for each sibling.
Even if you know Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Holst’s “The Planets” by heart, you probably haven’t heard those classics as keyed-up as they will be here, when Juilliard grads Deondra, Desirae, Gregory, Melody and Ryan Brown get through with them.
Now ages 24 to 31 — the fluffy-haired baby of the family, Ryan, looks like part of Broadway’s “American Idiot” — they’ve been taking lessons since they were 3, first on the family upright, then each on his or her own grand piano, for three to four hours a day.
Expect a big sound, if not a “Big Love.” Considering that TV show and Mitt Romney’s run for office, could Mormons be having a moment?
“Obviously, it’s exciting for us to see other Mormons doing cool things,” Desirae says, carefully.
“But ‘Big Love’ is about fundamentalist Mormons, and that’s not what we do!”
What the Browns do do, now that they’re all married musicians — with one
spouse apiece — is concertize and make CDs. Their latest
is a happy hodgepodge of movie music called “The
5 Browns in Hollywood.”
Don’t be surprised if, along with today’s Beethoven and Debussy, they mix in that “Sound of Music” staple “My Favorite Things.”
One of their favorite things is New York, their home for the five years or so they each studied at Juilliard.
“We can’t wait to go back to Ollie’s!” cries Desirae (or was it Melody?). “We always ate there, and at the Broadway Diner.”
And then there’s the shopping. Say the Brown sisters of Salt Lake City, wistfully: “There’s no H&M in Utah.”
The 5 Browns play today at 2:30 p.m. at the Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street; 212-570-3949.