• Seattle Weekly: NW Folklife Festival Recap
  The Seattle Weekly writeup on last weekend’s Northwest Folklife Festival (lots of accordion acts involved!) mentions an accordion group called Hell’s Bellows but doesn’t include any links or photos. Does anyone know more about them?
• The Adventures of Sydney & Her Accordion
  Sydney is an ethnomusicologist researching Dominican merengue tipico, a type of merengue based around the accordion. Worth a visit just for her fantastic pictures of the Dominican Republic.
• The Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Campaign for “Weird Al” Yankovic
  Weird Al fans are raising money to get Al a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If you want to help the cause, donations are due by May 31. If Judge Judy and the Rugrats have stars, I think Weird Al’s is long overdue.

What’s on the accordion calendar this week?

• Motion Trio (Various dates)
  With a goal to “extract notes from the accordion which have never been heard before,” Poland’s innovative Motion Trio plays rare US tour dates this week in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. They don’t come around often, so catch these shows if you can!
• Accordion Kings and Queens (Saturday in Houston, TX)
  This concert spotlights the diversity of the Lone Star State’s accordion traditions with players old and young (including winners of the Big Squeeze competition) and stars from zydeco (Chubby Carrier), conjunto (Mingo Saldivar), and Western swing (Ginny Mac).
• Friendly City PolkaFest (Fri-Sun in Johnstown, PA)
  The 10th annual Friendly City PolkaFest features three days of nonstop polka music from bands like Eddie Blazonczyk’s Versatones, Polka Family, Polka Country Musicians, and many more.

In other important accordion news, today is my wife and co-author Anna’s birthday! Hooray! We’ll be jamming on the porch in her honor this afternoon.

Remember, if there’s an accordion event in your neighborhood, tell us about it!

• Interview with Lidia Kaminska, Classical Accordionist
  Hugh Sung interviews classical accordionist Lidia Kaminska in the first of a three-part video interview. In this episode, Lidia explains how the chromatic button accordion works and shows off her incredible skills.
• Corky Bennett
  Corky Bennett is a veteran accordionist/pianist in Reno, NV. He also served as Dick Contino’s arranger and conductor for many years, and still does shows with Dick and his own act around the country.
• Bester Quartet Cancels US Tour
  Unfortunately, the Bester Quartet has canceled its US tour, which was to include double-bills with Motion Trio in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC. (We’ve updated the listings on our calendar.)

From time to time, we get email from people looking for advice on buying their first accordion. I try to give them an overview of the instrument, what I found helpful when I was starting out, etc., but it’s difficult to convey all of that information through email.

Recently, though, I found this video guide to buying a piano accordion from the guy who runs Liberty Bellows in Philadelphia. He covers the basics — keyboard sizes, button layouts, numbers of reeds, bellows condition — and how they relate to pricing. Experienced players won’t hear anything new, but if you’re just getting started and want to know what to look for when buying your first accordion (new or used), it’s definitely worth checking out.

• The Polish Diva From Milwaukee
  Terry Palasz’s one-woman show about a Polish-English-Catholic soprano who learns to embrace her polka-lovin’ Midwestern roots. You can catch her performing tunes from the show this Saturday at the Seattle Folklife Festival.
• Silicon Valley Accordion Society
  The Silicon Valley Accordion Society has a blog! Or, at least, the start of one — so far there are just a few pictures of a recent picnic-meeting. Do you know of any other accordion club blogs?

I know, I know… we already have enough accordions around the house, but I’ve always been attracted to the chemnitzer concertina, “polka music’s workhorse”. There’s just something about those ornately-decorated square boxes and their distinctive tones that have always appealed to me. Maybe one day, when we start the “Let’s Polka” polka band, I’ll pick one up.

In the meantime, though, I’ve been combing through the voluminous concertina resources at ConcertinaMusic.com. They have a huge library of chemnitzer concertina sheet music and an extensive database of concertina musicians (everyone from Rudy Adams to Jack “Zimmy” Zimmerman). If you haven’t heard a chemnitzer concertina in the wild, there’s also a collection of MP3s. Even if you’re just a concertina wannabe like me, it’s worth checking out.

A legendary performer, teacher, and champion of the accordion, Maddalena Belfiore-Greco passed away last Friday. She began playing the accordion at age five and went on to study with some of the greatest accordion teachers, including Sanford Hertz, Charles Nunzio, Eugene Ettore, and Pietro Frosini. She eventually attended Julliard and, at age 17, gave a recital at Carnegie Hall.

Belfiore-Greco also authored several accordion technique books, including the Myron Floren Method books (in collaboration with Myron) and three seminal works on the bellows shake. In 1958, she opened the Belfiore Accordion School in her hometown of Kearny, NJ, and judged numerous international and national music competitions. In a recent interview, her advice to accordion students emphasized the importance of performing in public:

“Listen to your teacher, and very important – practice! You have to have goals. Also, what happens today (different from when I studied) is that no one has a chance to play any place. I used to play at all these Clubs and Organizations, and that doesn’t happen so much any more I feel… We used to play any place we could. It was all part of the teaching and learning process. Kids going out to play publicly is probably the best lesson they could ever learn!”

In 1971, after several years on the Board of Directors, Belfiore-Greco became the first female president of the American Accordionists’ Association. She was also a longtime officer in the prestigious Confédération Internationale des Accordéonistes (CIA) and was instrumental in bringing the 2007 Couple Mondiale accordion competition to the United States.

To learn more about Maddalena Belfiore-Greco’s life and impact on the accordion world, check out the thorough obituary at Accordion USA, as well as the fantastic interview mentioned above, which was conducted just last year. It includes some incredible old photos and news clippings of the extraordinary life of this accordion legend.

Need some hip threads to wear to those summer accordion festivals we mentioned earlier?

The folks at Threadless have answered the call with a quirky new shirt called Deer Organ (designed by Daniel Lim), which depicts a young accordionist serenading a couple of deer. (Seems like accordions and deer, or at least accordion-playing reindeer, are a popular T-shirt theme these days.)

It’s definitely a conversation starter; and perhaps, finally a worthy replacement for that tattered “Myron Floren: 1982 World Tour” shirt you’re still wearing…

Memorial Day Weekend marks the unofficial start of summer and, more importantly, the start of festival season: polka festivals, zydeco festivals, plain ol’ accordion festivals… the summer is filled with ’em! On tap this weekend:

• National Button Accordion Festival (Fri-Sun in Yukon, OK)
  Bayans, chromatics, concertinas… oh my! Three days of nonstop jamming and dancing to button accordions. (Piano accordions welcome, too.)
• USPA Festival and Convention (Fri-Sun in Independence, OH)
  The United States Polka Association hosts its annual bash with a huge lineup of polka bands (Eddie Blazonczyk’s Versatones, Polka Family, Dynabrass, and more) and an awards banquet to recognize outstanding achievements in the polka industry.
• National Polka Festival (Fri-Sun in Ennis, TX)
  This is the largest Czech heritage festival in the United States, with authentic food, costumes, and polka dancing, as well as music by Brave Combo, Vrazel’s Polka Band, and others.
• Simi Valley Cajun Creole Music Festival (Sat-Sun in Simi Valley, CA)
  One of the biggest Cajun festivals on the West Coast, featuring performances by Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys, Pine Leaf Boys, Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble, and more.

And festivals aren’t the only things on our accordion calendar this week. DeVotchKa is playing a unique show at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Murl Allen Sanders performs for both the Chicago and Milwaukee Accordion Clubs, and there’s a big Tejano-Conjunto and Cajun dance party in Austin with Mingo Saldivar and the Gulf Coast Playboys.

So much accordion, so little time!