"It's supposed to be entertaining," Deondra says. "It's not a funeral."

To accommodate the younger audience's shorter attention span, the arrangements are shortened — no full-length sonatas or 15-minute pieces — and they tend to play the more recognizable and melodic classical pieces, something you might hear in a movie or commercial (think "Clair de Lune" from "Ocean's 11"), although they mix in some more obscure pieces to satisfy the connoisseurs in the audience.

The five Browns sit on the edge of the stage at intermission to field questions from the audience, or to show a video that tells their story.

During performances, they alternately wear cocktail dresses/coats and ties and jeans and tennis shoes with shirts untucked. The audience dresses much the same.

"Why not take this pure music and reset it in modern times?" Desirae asks. "It doesn't have to be a museum in tuxes."

The Browns even add a dash of pop showmanship. Egged on by members of the audience during a concert in Salt Lake City last winter, Greg played Aaron Kernis' "Superstar Etude No. 1" with his fingers, hands, elbows, forearms and feet, beating the keys at warp speed, punctuated by a "yahoo!," leaving dazzled neophytes wondering, "What did I just see?"

Welcome to classical music, MTV style. This was all part of the plan to capture a modern audience for classical music. Just as they were launching their professional careers early in 2003, Greg wrote a letter to Joel Diamond, a Grammy Award-winning producer and manager in Los Angeles, explaining the direction the group wanted to pursue.

"I have been very troubled with the way things have been going in the classical music world," he wrote. "The audience for our art is growing thinner and thinner because its devotees are growing older and older. So far, few attempts have been made to bring this music to a new and younger audience ... these few attempts were ultimately unsuccessful ... because they failed to be accepted by both the classical world and the pop world."

"My family has been given a rare gift that I know could help change the way classical music is perceived by Americans. We have ... studied at the most elite music school in the country; this gives us validity in the classical world. We also happen to be young, we're outgoing and we have a modern look, and, according to most people, we have an intriguing story; this gives us appeal and marketability in the pop world. I truly believe that (we) can be this vehicle that could help save classical music by introducing it to a new generation ... We could make true classical music not only popular again but cool."