PERFORMANCE

The International Accordion Festival
The Lawn at Bryant Park

“‘Accordion wizards’ from around the planet try to impress one another and rock the park” - TimeOut New York

“No one else has hosted as diverse a range of events this summer as Bryant Park, but [Accordion Festival] might be the most eclectic” - Metro New York

“Offering accordionists an opportunity to change the stodgy image of their instrument” - The New York Times

Accordions Around the World is a weekly series featuring over 100 accordionists as well as bandoneon, bayan, concertina, and harmonium-players of different musical genres. Audiences have an opportunity to hear music from all over the world and to experience the wide range of this often overlooked and little-known instrument. 

The five-hour Friday finale of Accordions Around the World.

5 bands, each featuring an accordionist, play music from throughout the world:

5pm - Bil Afrah Project (Reinterpretation of the legendary Lebanese album)

6pm - Sunnyside Social Club (New Orleans-inspired cabaret punk blues)

7pm - Felipe Hostins’ Osnelda (Lively Brazilian Forró)

8pm - Zlatni Balkan Zvuk (High-energy Balkan wedding music)

9pm - Gregorio Uribe (A special Colombian Independence Day celebration)


The evening is hosted by “certified free spirit” (The New Yorker) Rachelle Garniez, whose story-songs have been described as “romantic, rhapsodic and casually hilarious” (The New York Times).

Experience the wide range of this often-overlooked and little-known instrument. Produced with Ariana’s List.

Food and drink curated by Hester Street Fair available for purchase.

http://nypost.com/2017/07/20/if-you-hate-accordions-dont-go-to-bryant-park-on-friday/

If you hate accordions, don’t go to Bryant Park on Friday

“Weird Al” Yankovic isn’t all that weird: Plenty of other people share his passion for the accordion.

They’ll be squeezing into Bryant Park on Friday for a free, five-hour-long festival featuring an instrument derided, at least in these parts, as a noisy contraption fit only for polkas. (Or, as a Gary Larson cartoon portrayed it: “Welcome to heaven … here’s your harp. Welcome to hell … here’s your accordion.”)

The instrument deserves more respect, says Ariana Hellerman, curator of all things accordion in the European-accented park behind the New York Public Library.

‘We’re trying to dissolve the notion that the accordion is only about polka — it’s deeper than that.’

“We’re trying to dissolve the notion that the accordion is only about polka — it’s deeper than that,” says Hellerman, 36, who doesn’t play the instrument herself but has amassed a roster of 400 people who do.

“I’m, like, the accordion queen of New York,” the East Village resident says with a laugh. “What’s interesting is that it’s played in so many cultures.”

Five years ago she was living and blogging about culture in Colombia when she discovered the accordion-dominated folk music called Vallenato. Her posts caught the attention of the Bryant Park Corporation, whose chief, Dan Biederman, became entranced by the accordion music he once heard in the French Alps. Hoping to replicate the experience in Bryant Park, he hired a lone accordionist to make the rounds — “but it wasn’t really exciting,” he tells The Post.

Enter Hellerman and her magic Rolodex. In the last five years she’s helmed the “Accordions Around the World” series, with hundreds of squeezebox players (and the people who enjoy them) descending on Bryant Park. The program culminates at Friday’s Accordion Festival with five bands introduced by Rachelle Garniez, an East Village musician who discovered an affinity for the instrument late in life:

“I started playing it as a joke when I was 22, sort of hipsterish ironic performance art,” Garniez, 52, tells The Post. “But the joke backfired … I held it in my arms and it became like a baby.” That said, she adds that “When my home was broken into years ago, [the thieves] took my accordion out of its case, filled the case with pennies they found in the house, and took the case. They left the accordion!”