I met Peter DiGiovanni when I became the Music Director of the Washington Metropolitan Accordion Society (WMAS) in late 2003. In early 2004, I created the Potomac Accordion Ensemble, a small group of accordionists from WMAS. Peter came for our first rehearsal and attended every ensemble performance.

Peter wrote beautiful arrangements for our ensemble through the years and for the Holiday Orchestra that I conducted annually.
After moving from the Washington area Peter was my choice to take over as the WMAS Music Director. That was the best decision imaginable!

More on that later. First, let’s meet Peter:
Originally from New York, Peter DiGiovanni now lives in Oakton, Virginia, with his wife, Sally. After earning his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Peter joined Mobil Oil Corporation in 1968. During his satisfying 32-year career, he worked in 5 petroleum refineries and 3 Headquarters locations. His assignments covered a broad range of business areas, including process engineering, economics, planning, scheduling, marketing, budget, finance, supply, transportation, financial analysis and management. In 1998, Peter became a licensed Realtor in the Commonwealth of Virginia and is currently a sales agent with Long & Foster Realtors, Inc.

Peter is presently affiliated with the Washington Balalaika Society (Principal 3rd accordion), the Washington Metropolitan Accordion Society ,President), the American Accordionists Association, and the Accordions for Kids program offered by Accordions Plus. He also performs, solo and with singers and in small ensembles, at parties and celebrations, weddings, grand openings, public and private concerts, fundraisers, and music clubs and festivals. He has several original compositions to his credit, some of which have won awards, and has created scores of arrangements and lead sheets (pun intended). 

Peter also enjoys bowling, bridge, golf, puzzles, investing and traveling. When asked how he came about playing the accordion, Peter replied: “Musically, it all started as a young child with our piano at home. My Dad played by ear (only in the key of C, mind you) and showed me scales and chord progressions. There was always music playing in the house which exposed me to a continuous stream of wonderful new material. I had about 2 years of piano lessons as a young teenager, which I did not fully embrace at the time, but now wish I had. My father also had an accordion (Superior – 1938, made in NY), but I showed no interest in it. He gave it to me when I was about 35, and I was delighted to discover that the bass buttons were arranged in the circle of fifths, which tied in nicely with my ear for music. I rarely played it, only taking it to an occasional party – more as a lark rather than for real entertainment. But a series of amazing coincidences was about to change all that.

After retiring from Mobil in 2000, I joined the 400-member Potomac Annuitants Club (PAC), and at the request of the Club President, was elected to the Club VP position in 2003. He could have asked anybody, but he asked me! One of my responsibilities was to organize the Christmas party. In searching for entertainment, Sally and I wanted to do something different than inviting the traditional high school singers that the Club has been relying on for years. We kept thinking about the wonderful concerts performed by the Washington Balalaika Society (WBS), which we had been going to for several years. I called the WBS executive director, Max McCullough, to see if there was a small group from the orchestra that could entertain us, and the Samovar ensemble accepted! Then, for the sing-along portion of the party, the lady who had been accompanying us on the piano for free moved 30 miles away and would only come back if we paid her. I am not a great pianist by any means, but I knew I could do a Christmas sing-along, so I did. Then, as a lark, or so I thought, I brought the accordion my Dad gave me to the party and played it for the last song – The Twelve Days of Christmas, where everyone split up into 12 groups and I moved about the room with one of the members who dressed as Santa Claus, conducting them in at their turn to sing. The Samovar players were still there, and upon hearing me play, they encouraged me to join WBS. I was shocked. You gotta be kidding!

I had only played the accordion maybe six times in my life. I had no experience playing where it really mattered what note I hit and my sight reading was terrible, so I was quite apprehensive, particularly knowing how great the orchestra sounded. But I got up my nerve, went to a rehearsal, bought a new accordion from Dale Wise, and the rest is history.
Since then, the accordion has been the centerpiece of my retirement. But if I hadn’t been asked to be on the PAC Board AND if Samovar didn’t play at the Christmas Party AND if the lady hadn’t moved away . . . . none of this would have happened!”

Recently, the pandemic forced WMAS to move their in-person meetings to Zoom as did many other organizations. Peter, a technical whiz, hosted the meetings and helped the participants through the maze of technical issues that always come up. This allowed the members to stay connected, with the added benefit of including those who lived too far away to attend in-person meetings.

For the 2021 WMAS Holiday Concert, Peter put together a virtual orchestra comprised of 14 WMAS accordionists playing six entertaining selections. He arranged the selections and sent reference tracks to the participants who then made video recordings of themselves playing their parts. Peter took these videos, edited them as needed, combined them into a virtual orchestra, added some special effects, and Voila! The concert also featured several soloists. Everyone had a great time and the end result was musically and visually delightful!! The whole concert can be view here. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZNQgY-72ck

WMAS is now back to in-person meetings. When they are not featuring a concert, they frequently enjoy playing together in jam sessions with the help of sheet music – usually lead sheets. The written music helps those who need sheet music to play from, as well as providing a more cohesive structure for each piece – harmony, road map, etc. It also expands the pool of songs far beyond those that most people already know. The challenge for the members has been to maintain a collection of sheet music to play from. Not everyone is at all the meetings, so some folks miss some of the handouts. Over the years, hundreds of pages of music have been distributed in these “play-alongs,” and much of it has been uploaded to the WMAS website. Regardless of how it’s distributed, individual players must print, organize and index the music somehow. Printing “play-along” books for all the member players would be expensive, and adding new material to it over time would pose the same challenges.

About 24 hours before the February 13 WMAS meeting, while rehearsing duets with Halina Banas-Jones, Peter had an idea – why not project the music on the wall so everyone can see it! After all, he had all the play-along music on his iPad, as well as a ton of other lead sheets and fake books. [A direct result of pandemic-lifestyle-induced boredom (PLIB) prompted Peter to make the leap from paper to iPad – and he hasn’t looked back once!] So on the way to the meeting he bought a projector along with the necessary HDMI cable and adapter. He chose an Epson VS260, though there are many others that would do the job. The VS260 image was bright enough to use in a lit room. It could fill the wall from floor to ceiling, connect with the iPad and mirror its screen onto the wall. Total investment was about $400.

The players were delighted – no more binders, no more hunting for the music, no more staring at each other wondering what to play next, and they didn’t even need their music stands! The sorting and indexing is easily done in the iPad using the forScore app. The two-hour meeting was a huge success. Keep this in mind for your own playing group if you find yourself in a similar situation.

The next WMAS meeting will take place, in person, on March 20, 2022 at the Sleepy Hollow UMC in Falls Church, VA. If you will be in the Washington, DC area at that time, please come and say “Hello” and celebrate the 19th birthday of WMAS with everyone. Bring your accordion, but not your music stand, as everyone will be playing music “from the wall”.

I am speaking for all the members of WMAS: “Thank you, Peter, for all you have done and continue to do for our club!”

Photos:
The Potomac Ensemble (partial group):  L to R Joan Grauman, Mark Nejako, JoAnn Pankow, Meryl Benenati and Peter DiGiovanni
WMAS play-along music now projected on the wall