Equina Elan-Mo
So you’re a closet accordion player, tired of being treated like a second-class musical citizen. Well, then permit me to persuade you to pose for an awesome photograph while showing the world that the accordion deserves as much respect as a violin. Or more!
1. The accordion is a very photogenic instrument. You are a very pretty girl. Add a great hat, and some photographer will likely make you his muse.
2. What did Gandhi, Charles Dickens, Richard Nixon, Thomas Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and Jimmy Stewart have in common? Correct. Accordion players extraordinaire. That’s pretty good company.
3. As you know, a good accordionist can play so much more than just a mean polka. On April 18, 1939, Joe Biviano, Abe Goldman, and Gene von Halberg became the first to play the accordion in Carnegie Hall. Their selection: Bach’s “Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor.” Come on now. You’re good enough to become the first woman to play The Who’s “Squeeze Box” at Madison Square Garden.
4. Classical accordion has been taught at the Royal Academy of Music for more than 25 years. You studied there, yourself. You can’t get any more respectable. Nothing to be ashamed of there.
5. Professor Willard Palmer is credited with having the longest continuous master’s degree program in accordion ever (at the University of Houston). Palmer also appeared on the television show, “America’s Funniest Videos” playing the “Beer Barrel Polka” on the accordion. It fell apart in the middle of the song. This would never happen to you. Remember 1998? Before you locked yourself in the closet? You played “Danny Boy,” and left the entire television audience in tears. Even Oprah.
6. Former Boston Celtics player Tony Lavelli played his accordion at half-time. Lavelli attended Yale and was a member of Skull and Bones. He appeared as an accordion soloist for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. As a senior, he applied to the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the New England Conservatory of Music. Lavelli was no schmendrick, and neither are you.
7. There used to be a popular television game show/talent contest in the Soviet Union called “Play Your Accordion!” You and your accordion deserve that kind of audience. Rumor has it that HBO wants to make a docudrama about a gorgeous accordionist with a cool hat collection who plays Tchaikovsky and Springsteen in her bedroom closet. You’d be perfect.
8. A New Zealander broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest non-stop accordion playing. Your husband says you can break the record. Easy. But you have to come out of the closet to do it.
9. June is National Accordion Awareness Month. That’s 30 days of celebrating you and the one you love. Thirty days! Stay in the closet and you’ll miss all the fun!
Note: There is a very nice organization called CAPA: Closet Accordion Players of America. If the foregoing hasn’t persuaded you to come out of the closet, you may want to consider joining.
Photo "6218641905" not found (inactive member)Photo "6218641905" not found (inactive member)Photo "6218641905" not found (inactive member)Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, pamullman and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
