When asked if there’s anything about the accordion he wishes the public knew, Robert Young McMahan responds he wishes there was a lot that they didn’t.
“Polka is at the top of my list,” he says. “Lawrence Welk is second.” But he hastens to add that, even though Welk “wasn’t cool,” he helped popularize the instrument. “The arrangements were quite good, and Myron Floren played quite well, for what they were doing.”
He winces at the mention of “Lady of Spain” (“I was hoping you weren’t old enough to know that,” he says), and he hates the term “squeezebox.”
McMahan’s lifelong passion for the accordion is evident in every sentence, as he vacillates between wistfulness at the instrument’s waning popularity among Americans (in part he blames Elvis, who caused youngsters to gravitate to the electric guitar), and hope, in the acknowledgment of up-and-coming talent from Scandinavia, Russia, and the Far East.
A professor of music on the faculty of The College of New Jersey, he is secretary of the American Accordionists’ Association. Each year, the association holds its conference in a different American city. This year, hundreds of accordionists and accordion aficionados will descend on the Westin Princeton at Forrestal Village, from July 12 to July 16. Festival registration will begin at 3:00 this afternoon, with exhibits opening at 5.
McMahan, whose wife, Anne, is president of Princeton Friends of Opera, will give a lecture about the accordion and opera, on July 13 at 9 a.m. He will also participate in a gala concert, performing music of Lukas Foss, alongside violinist Emmanuel Borowski and cellist Cecylia Barczak, on July 14 at 7 p.m.
The conference will include music of all genres (presumably even polka), workshops, and scholarship competitions. You can find out more about it in my article in this week’s edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, out today.
http://www.princetoninfo.com/index.php/component/us1more/?Itemid=6&key=7-12-17mcmahan