Dee Langley and Dr. Robert McMahon will be the AAMS Festival featured guest artists on Saturday evening, March 7, at the Park Ridge Hotel and Conference Center in King of Prussia, Pa.
Dee has participated in seminars and symposiums on accordion styles and techniques in Chatel, France and Klingenthal, East Germany. She also has performed with the Dolina Polish Folk Dancers and Ethnic Dance Theatre as well as officiating as Director of the EDT Folk Orchestra. She went on concert tours of Poland, France and the Czech Republic. Dee has performed accordion works with the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, and the Northwoods Classical Players (members of the Chicago Symphony).
Dee has also premiered compositions with the Ancia Quartet, the Minneapolis Philharmonic and Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra working with contemporary composers including, Peter Blauvelt, Mary Ellen Childs, Becky Dale, Shelley Hanson, Mark Hellem, Carleton Macy, Carole Saline and Kim Sherman to expand the visibility of classical accordion with other instruments.
Dee Langley, co-founder the Minnesota Accordion Club, currently lives in Minneapolis, where she teaches accordion and performs with her accordion duet partner, Greg Dagoumas, as “Just Du-et”, and is a member of the Bulgarian group, “Traki”. She is President of the Accordionists’ and Teachers’ Guild, Int., and a member of the American Accordion Musicological Society and the American Accordionists’ Association.
Dr.Robert McMahon is the 2009 Honoree of the American Accordion Musicological Society. A native of Washington, DC, Dr.Robert McMahan began his musical career at age twelve when he became an accordion student of Louis Coppola. He later won many first place awards in the American Accordionists’ Association national competitions in classical and contemporary original music divisions in the 1960s. He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Robert Hall Lewis, Jean Eichelberger Ivey, and Stefan Grove.
Dr. McMahon holds a master’s degree in the Great Books program at St. John’s College and is on the music faculty of the College where he is Professor of Music and coordinator of theory and composition studies and classical accordion. As a noted classical accordionist, he has tirelessly promoted the instrument in serious contemporary music across his entire career.
He has recorded on the CRS and Orion labels and was accordionist for the Baltimore Symphony during his years of residence in that region. Presently, he is an officer of the Board of Governors of the American Accordionists’ Association and is the chair of its Composers Commissioning Committee. He became active with the AAMS in 1992.
For more info please contact Joanna Arnold Darrow: accordion1@comcast.net.
