Like me you have basically 2 extreme tastes in musical styles.
Well, classical (Bach, Chopin, Mozart, etc...) and Czech/german/European style... some refer to it as OOOM-pah.
Less is More
Absolutely! Nothing worse than fumbling around and making lots of mistakes. Easy (for you) music allows smiles, eye contact, music blowing around, talking while playing, etc. Generally the public doesn’t know the difference. I played an hour and a half farmers market today (which I said I wasn’t going to do, but my friend contacted me to fill in) before getting rained out. Because of all my “medical tourism” this summer, I had to rely on pretty much the same music I played last year, luckily most of it pretty easy (for me). But I was still pretty rusty.
No, but a lady started dancing to Aura Lee. Turns out she’s a fiddle player who plays with my friend some times. I said, “Oh, do you want to buy a fiddle, I’ve got a couple to sell, one signed by Vassar Clements.” “Oh, I knew him,” says she, “I used to play with him in Florida.” Small world! We’ll see! Then I go over to help cut a tree out of my other friend’s creek. Oh, says he, “I’m going to give your name to the people who run the senior meals I go to.” Why not? When it rains, it pours!
The only thing wrong with choosing overly ambitious music is playing it publicly it BEFORE it is ready for others. Playing music outside our comfort zone will (over time) elevate your playing and thus in time elevate where your comfort zone is... making the now more challenging music your new normal.
Thanks Lost! I’m not familiar with that album, will check it out. Same with Vassar, he was fond of playing with lots of different musicians and genres, one of my favs being “Old and in the Way” (which I’m sure I’ve been considered).
Like me you have basically 2 extreme tastes in musical styles.
No mention of any such recording on Vassar's wikipedia discography. I checked out Galliano's website discography. No mention of Vassar. There is a recording with Christian Howes on violin called Southern Exposure. https://www.richardgalliano.com/en/album-music/southern-exposure-christian-howes/ Maybe this is the recording you're thinking of?
Tchaikovsky already employed accordion in the 19th century (cf his Orchestral Suite Nº2). In my opinion, the tone of an accordion is not pliable enough to thrive in orchestral settings, and the Stradella bass is useless there. Its poor-man's diatonic cousin, the bandonion, fares better in that regard. Like its big counterpart, the organ, the accordion works mostly as a solo instrument when played as a whole. If you want to look at a thriving accordion culture, you have to move from the classic scene and see, for example, its role in (non-traditional) popular music in Finland. Once you get to "a rock band without accordion? Unthinkable!", we are talking. The accordion can pitch in for the role of the "keyboarder" in bands and do that in a more relatable manner than electronic sound production. However, particularly with piano accordions this has been tried already in the U.S. (check out the Titano Tiger), and hasn't taken off.
Scott Joplin is "OOOM-pah" to the degree where with note-reading skills you can play his stuff on a Stradella accordion straight off the piano score and have piano players say "good riddance" upon seeing how you manage those pesky left-hand double bass/chord alternations.Well, classical (Bach, Chopin, Mozart, etc...) and Czech/german/European style... some refer to it as OOOM-pah.
Yinks, that's a wild statement about an instrument I play professionally (organ) and I'm struggling in all charity to think of any part of it that might be true.
Accordion works so well with other instruments. I find the fiddle/violin can really enhance the accordion when they are together and also the tone of the accordion elevates the cello when they are together.
