The 5 Browns: 10 hands on 440 keys

Off a freeway far away from "Carmageddon" on Saturday night, the 5 Browns will be headlining a program of Mozart, Saint-Saëns and Mussorgsky. The two brothers and three sisters and their five pianos will appear  on the Verizon Amphitheater stage in Irvine with the Pacific Symphony and conductor Carl St.Clair.

It's not been an easy year for the family. Their father, Keith Brown, who once managed the group, recently pleaded guilty to sexually abusing his three daughters and in March was sentenced to 10 years to life and is now in Utah State Prison.

It's not something they will discuss about as they move on with performing. In a conversation with Calendar, brothers Ryan and Gregory spoke about their sibling closeness and their craft. Click here to read the interview.

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Carmageddon: L.A.'s cultural institutions plan to hunker down

Photo: The 5 Browns, from left: Gregory, Deondra, Desirae, Ryan and Melody. Credit: Andrew Southam

Carmageddon: L.A.'s cultural institutions plan to hunker down

Cultural institutions around Los Angeles are bracing themselves for "Carmageddon," the 405 freeway closure on Saturday and Sunday, with a number of museums, theaters and performance spaces either closing or altering their schedules to accommodate the anticipated impact on traffic.

Venues located near the 405 will experience the most disruption this weekend. The Getty Center in Brentwood will be closed to the public and most staff on Saturday and Sunday due to the demolition of the Mulholland Drive Bridge. The museum is set to reopen to the public on Tuesday.  (The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades will be open for normal business hours.)

The Hammer Museum in Westwood will close one hour early at 6 p.m. on Friday to give visitors and staff ample time to travel home. The museum will be open normal hours on Saturday and Sunday, and is offering free admission on those days. "We want to encourage those in the area who can walk or bike to visit the museum," said a spokeswoman.

Carmageddon, something we can all agree on

Any time I write about mass transit and freeways in Los Angeles I brace myself for the inevitable backlash in the form of displeased emails and phone calls. (No subject is more contentious in Southern California.) Tuesday morning, though, after my Critic's Notebook on this weekend's coming Carmageddon appeared in the Calendar section, I am happy to report that the email is running strongly in favor of many of the ideas laid out in the piece.

It's early, of course. Things could change.

Meanwhile, check out my Reading L.A. post on David Brodsly's "L.A. Freeway," a book whose wisdom about mobility in Los Angeles holds up quite well three decades after it was published.

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Reading L.A.

-- Christopher Hawthorne

Photo: An L.A. freeway interchange at night. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times