Vegas musician owns house at center of Tony Hsieh incident - Las Vegas Review-Journal

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The house in which Tony Hsieh suffered his fatal injuries is linked to the Las Vegas arts community.

Rachael Brown, a longtime Zappos employee who is known to be one of Hsieh’s closest confidants, is the listed owner of the home in small port town of New London, Conn.

Originally from Connecticut, Brown lives in Las Vegas and is a cellist with Nina Di Gregorio’s Bella Electric Strings ensemble and also David Perrico’s Pop Strings orchestra.

Hsieh died Friday of injuries he suffered in a fire at the house on Nov. 18. He was 46.

Brown, considered an accomplished musician, has been booked across the country for more than a decade with the Bella lineup. Pop Strings had been headlining weekends for five years at Cleopatra’s Barge at Caesars Palace pre-COVID. Brown also was part of the Vegas Golden Strings lineup that backed Imagine Dragons on “Whatever It Takes” prior to Game 2 of the NHL Final at T-Mobile Arena in May 2018. She has played in the orchestra for Brody Dolyniuk’s rock-symphony shows at the Smith Center.

In August, Brown helped organize a musicians’ trip to a condo near Hsieh’s estate in Park City. The sojourn was just two weeks before Hsieh announced he would be stepping down from Zappos and relocating to the ski-resort town. Hsieh arranged for two concert-tour buses for the players (one of which was used by Cher, the other by LeAnn Rimes, among other artists), which allowed all passengers to be socially distant.

Perrico and his wife, singer Lily Arce; keyboardist Otto Ehling; violinist Chandra Meibalane; and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Park all took part in the three-day respite. Park has been a resident of the Hsieh-developed Airstream community in downtown Las Vegas.

Perrico said there was no agenda in the visit.

“He loved music, and we were there as guests and just hung out and jammed,” Perrico said Saturday. “We didn’t go up there to talk business. We went up there to get out of the heat, play music, relax and go hiking.”

Efforts to reach Brown for comment have been unsuccessful.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.