Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph

Minty Brown

Leader's illness leaves orchestra fate in limbo

By Clarence Cromwell

After seven years of sponsoring local concerts, the Los Gatos Chamber Orchestra is in limbo, with its chief organizer, Minty Brown, hospitalized with cancer.

Because the orchestra didn't request support, the Town Council shifted the orchestra's funding to Music in the Plaza at its April 1 meeting.

After discovering a cancerous tumor in Brown's trachea, doctors gave her radiation treatments. She recently underwent cancer-related throat surgery at Valley Medical Center. No one stepped in to take control of the organization after Brown became too sick to do the job at the end of last year. She'd been diagnosed with cancer about a year earlier.

Orchestra members described Brown as a "one-woman show" and said they hope Brown will return to organizing concerts. In the meantime, Los Gatans will have to go without the five concerts a year Brown organized to entertain residents and give local musicians a chance to showcase their art.

"She's really the heart and the brain of the orchestra," said Erna Schloh, a friend of Brown.

Brown used the orchestra to encourage young musicians and often incorporated musicians from Saratoga or Los Gatos High school into chamber concerts. The orchestra also hosted a chocolate-tasting fundraiser each year at the Saratoga home of Donald Call.

The orchestra's budget, which ranged from $4,0000 to $6,000 yearly, was funded by the town and with money from the county Arts Council.

Admission to the concerts was usually a voluntary $5 donation.