Well, what can be said except – What a Festival! Not just for the parties and sponsors involved, but the entire accordion world at large. In our world wide quest to improve the sometimes lowly stigma surrounding the accordion, no event could have helped that very quest more.
Because of the amount of contestants competing, the Roland competition had to be split up into 2 sessions. The first, a 10 minute performance on Friday, taking place in a beautiful room at the Grand Ritz Hotel in Rome for which the judges, family of the competitors, and a few others involved with the competition could watch.
The second part was a 5 minute performance by each competitor in front of 1,300 spectators, distinguished guests, and live TV at the Auditorium Parco Della Musica. Note: the auditorium held 1,300 seats.
This sell out is largely due to Roland’s fantastic promotion of the event: Full page articles in the newspapers for weeks, large ads in magazines, billboards you couldn’t miss all around Rome, and others of which I don’t even know about.
Roland means business when they say “We are serious about the accordion”, and the founder of Roland, Ikutaro Kakehashi, made sure everyone knew this matter intently, with a 3 minute video appearance at the beginning of the second competition and show.
As the audience was now ready for a night of modern accordion, it was my task to open the show. In what some now call as classic “Cory style” after the Coupe Mondiale and other appearances, I went up with simply a framework of ideas, and let the rest happen in the moment.
The only element I had predetermined, was to start with an Italian favorite “Anema E Core” with all traditional accordion patches to bring the audience in first, so as the competitors could then take them to where ever they wanted: and did they ever!
In total, every performer gave something different, in terms of genre, feel, tempo, emotion, rhythm, and use of the features existing in the Roland V-Accordion. Because there isn’t enough space to talk about every performers most memorable part, I can tell you they all were fantastic in their own way.
Whether Canada’s Alexander Sevastian’s power and ferocity but incredible handling of the accordion, or Brazil’s Orimar Hess Junior, who had the double hand on bass feature that captured everyone’s eyes and ears, or Grayson Masefield‘s Coupe Mondiale piece which he turned upside down, inside out, to the 5th dimension and back which also included audience participation, or China’s Xiaonan Xu’s absolutely incredible technique and use of the accordion, to Swedan’s Lisa Eriksson’s completely gorgeous songs that she had composed herself.
Although some will call it a bias opinion coming from me, as I am known to be outspoken on how I dislike certain aspects of competitions because of issues concerning musicianship, I really do feel that this should be more of a concert rather than a competition, and there have been many thumbs up from different sources.
I believe, that most of the people in the audience forgot this was a “competition” by the 3rd contestant: because it truly was a concert showing off some of the finest accordionists from all over the globe, playing an incredibly diverse amount of music.
And isn’t that why we love the instrument, because we know how unbelievably diverse it can be and this festival forcefully pointed out that fact to a mass audience.
No audience member could help but be struck by the playing abilities and the amazing sounds that can come from a Roland V-Accordion, especially in the hands of these players.
Moreover, all the competitors got along with each other so very well, and all appreciated what the others had to offer, and furthermore, were exchanging music and ideas with each other by the end of the first day alone. It was truly a beautiful sight, even if few were able to see this.
We are all in this together, and through festivals like the one I just attended and with the correct direction, the accordion will be a cool, hip, and highly appreciated instrument by every genre of person in every sector of the world.
In the photo you will see my favorite part of the trip – me and Ludovic doing an hour and a half hour impromptu duo from Techno to Classical to tunes we were making up on the spot and somehow complimenting each other. A future Duo concert, I can foresee in the future.
P.S. – And to my close buddy Grayson Masefield – Congratulations……….Again!! A Big Thanks to all the people who made this event a great success, especially Ludvic Beier for all the compositions that tied everything together so well. Marco Cinaglia for the dancers, and the head quartet of Akira Hanechi and Luigi Bruti, Sara Rossetti and Alessandra Curzi.
For further information: corypesaturo@corypesaturo.com
A full report, results and lots of photos of the 3rd Roland International V-Accordion Festival and Competition, November 19th to 20th, is online at: 2009 Rome Festival.
