Eastern Sound Orchestra

The New Hampshire-­based Eastern Sound Orchestra is one of New England’s most popular and enduring Polish polka ensembles. For thirty­-two years they have been entertaining audiences from Montreal to Miami with their fiddle-­driven, highly danceable East Coast style.

All of the members of the group grew up with polka. Drummer and founding member John Sobczak recounts that his parents met at a Polish dance in Salem, Massachusetts, and he remembers being taken to dances as a child. He and other band members listened to musicians such as Al Sojka, L’il Wally, Walt Solak, Dick Pillar, Happy Louie and Roy Henry, popular regional bandleaders who helped create the contemporary East Coast polka style. Like the dancing that it accompanies, the East Coast style is more relaxed and less frenetic than the Chicago style which dominates the Midwest. Canadian bands, many of which featured fiddle, as did the rural groups from Eastern Europe whose descendants came to work in the towns and cities of New England, were also popular.

Since its founding in 1975, the Eastern Sound Orchestra has played hundreds of concerts and dances throughout the Eastern US. Like most contemporary polka bands, they play music from a variety of genres, including country, rock and roll and big band, but the emphasis is on older, traditional Polish songs and tunes. Three of the six are original members of the band, and three sing in Polish. Accordionist Chester Wodarski was born and raised in Poland. Founding member Tony Malionek, who plays accordion, trumpet and piano, also sings in Polish. Richard Lapadula plays trumpet and percussion, and Mike Petrishen handles clarinet, saxophone and fiddle. The group is completed by Peter Sylvester on bass and fiddle, both instruments that he crafted himself.