From the Belleville News_Democrat: Accordionist Amy Jo Sawyer performed on the accordion with the St. Louis Symphony’s United States Premiere of Disney’s Academy Award winning movie “Ratatouille.”

Sara Hicks, winner of many music awards, was the conductor as the Symphony produced live music to the film viewed on a high-definition big screen. The music required a “French Musette” accordion sound on which Sawyer performed.

In this regard, Sawyer said she was “privileged” to know Frank Marocco who was the accordionist that did the recording in the original movie.“He was a wonderful friend that passed away three years ago,” she said. “He attended the Frank Marocco Accordion Event held in Mesa, Ariz., that I participated in annually for five years. He liked my original music for accordion orchestra and chose to have the 50 piece orchestra perform my music in each annual concert.”

Marocco also chose to have her original Tango, “Juntos” (Together), performed in a concert he conducted in 2011 in Castelfidardo, Italy.

Amy Jo Sawyer has become very popular and well-known in recent years for her own compositions which are usually more of the entertainment or commercial styles of music, including tango, swing, and Latin jazz, for example. She has written not only for solo accordion but also for accordion ensemble. The entertaining compositions are not normally difficult but rather quite accessible by most all groups of accordionists today and very popular with both performers and listeners throughout the world.

Photo: From left, Guitarist Steve Schenkel, Accordionist Amy Jo Sawyer and Guitarist Kirk Hanser were three musicians performing with the St. Louis Symphony for the movie “Ratatouille” recently at Powell Hall.

For further information: AmyJo@apci.net