Will Holzhauser

Accordionist Will Holzhauser has played in a wide variety of bands, from violinist Regina Carter's jazz hybrid group Reverse Thread, to singer-songwriters like Suzanne Vega and Rufus Wainwright, to klezmer bands, to his own trio, Musette Explosion. On his latest recording, Lone Wild Bird, he goes it alone, solo.

The austere setting allows Holzhauser to really showcase the sound of his instrument and its versatility. In the hymn-like track that we just heard, it can be solemn and pensive, but it can also be boisterous and joyful. The setting also allows us to hear the inner workings of his instrument. Underneath the accordion sound are grunts and huffs from the air that gets pumped inside of it.

Thank you.

Holzhauser grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the son of two ministers, so hymns were an early part of his musical diet. He was studying jazz piano and turned to accordion when a college pal gave him one as a gift. He was fascinated by the mechanics of the instrument and its versatility. It was a cornerstone in folk music from New Orleans to Madagascar.

And Holzhauser, who was 56, was finding his way through his instrument's range. at a time when exotic music was rapidly becoming more accessible via the recording boom of the 80s and 90s and the rise of the Internet shortly thereafter. It is this variety of music that is reflected on Lone Wild Bird.

Holzhauser's original Three Glasses is a minor key and intimate tribute to composer Dmitri Shastakovich. Holshouser's jazz roots are a prominent part of the program. Blue Waters reflects his interest in Counterpoint, and it has a bluesy feel. It's a tribute to jazz organ great Jimmy Smith.

Thank you.

Holshauser's jazz interest also led him to the traditional hymn, Abide With Me. The music dates back to the 19th century, but legendary jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk recorded an all-horns arrangement. It made the accordionist ponder, what would it have sounded like if Monk played the piano on the track? You can hear some of this idea here. ¦

For many music fans, the accordion will bring to mind the music of the Celtic punk rockers, the Pogues, and Holzhauser touches on the Irish traditions on Reel to Reel, a tune written in part by his brother-in-law, who makes violins and played in a band with his father, a first-generation Irish immigrant.

Well, sure. Well, on the right side, there's a keyboard. It looks like a piano keyboard. And these keys, when you push a key, it opens a valve in the accordion, and that allows air to pass over metal reeds, which are inside the box. So when The nickname for it, one nickname for it is the squeeze box. So as you move the bellows back and forth, that generates the air.

And then when you push the keys on the right hand or the buttons on the left hand, that lets the air through and the reeds sound. So my accordion has four sets of reeds. It can play very low notes on the right hand. Or very high notes, if you hit these register switches, you can change the reed bank that's activated. And then there are two middle sets of reeds, which are slightly detuned.

And you can also play all four sets together. So, and then the left hand has buttons, which in the standard accordion system are bass notes and chords. And this was made, invented in the 19th century to play music that did that. European music, and it's all based, of course, around the European tonal system. That system is called stradella.

There's a town in Italy called stradella where it was invented. So it's a lot of fun. It's a very versatile instrument with a very wide range and wide dynamics. The dynamics come from the bellows, which it's often said the bellows in the accordion is like the bow of the violin. That's where you get dynamics, expression, and a whole host of other effects.

Bellowing. Bellowing, all right. I suppose, but yeah. Well, it's mostly dynamics, but the sound of the note does change as you change the air pressure.

Yeah. As you push harder, it gets louder as you push more air across the reed. And there's some special effects. If you open the valve halfway and push the air really hard, it can bend the pitch.

Well, it's basically French dance hall music from the first half of the 20th century. And it's led... The accordion is the lead instrument. The guitar is also very important. And one of the standard forms in this type of music is the waltz. And to us as Americans... It sounds iconically French. But then if you look beneath the surface, it actually has a very multicultural family tree.

So it began with French peasants in Paris playing an instrument called the musette, which was actually a little bagpipe. And then around 1900, there was a wave of Italian immigrants who brought the accordion and a lot of their music to Paris. And they kind of took over the dance halls. The accordion became the lead instrument. The bagpipe was forgotten but left its name to the genre, musette.

And there were also the large... Roma gypsy population in France and they contributed a lot of their style to this genre also. Some people say the Roma guitarists were the first ones to write waltzes in minor keys which became a classic musette sound.

Exactly. His first gig was playing banjo in a musette dance band. Banjo?

That's right.

Sure. That sounds great.

Oh, I was just making sure that I had the right register on. Okay. Because you can, depending on which register you have, you can get, you know, in a different octave. Each one has a sort of different sound or different flavor.

All right. This is Swing Vals, written by Baro Ferre and Gus Visser. ¦

Through reissues that came out in the 1990s. There's a great label in France called Fremaux and Associates. So I heard them and I was struck by this music and kind of blown away by how do they get these sounds out of the accordion? And Matt Munisseri, my friend, felt the same way. And that's sort of how we started playing together. We were both interested in French musette.

And it's so expressive, virtuosic. It's an unusual type of – some of these tunes, especially swing-valse, are hybrids of jazz and French music. So when some of these French musette musicians – fell in love with jazz in the 20s and 30s, they began to write these hybrid tunes that were, and hence the name, Swing Vals, inspired by the American records that they were crazy about.

It's true. And especially dissonance on the accordion, playing notes very close together can bring out those overtones. And there is a whole range of effects you can get.

All right. Well, here's some very high notes with special overtones. If you shake the bellows, you can make it shimmer like that. You can do these bending notes like I showed you before. There's sort of nice clusters you can get. I'm letting her hand flop around on the keyboard like a fish. There's rhythmic things you can do with the bellows.

Sometimes when I play for my daughter's class, I'll do a train effect. The kids like that.

Anyway, so yeah, and that's done by shaking the bellows back and forth. So yeah, there are all kinds of things. You can do, you know, you can use the breath, the breathing sound. And you just heard the bellows kind of squeezing, flopping together. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of... The effects you can get.

Okay.

Well, one of the kinds of work that I've really enjoyed doing as an accordionist in New York over the last 20 years or so is accompanying singers. And I've had great pleasure to accompany some singers that do French repertoire from the chanson tradition, which of course just means song. But it's, for example, the most famous exponent of the chanson tradition is Edith Piaf.

And for a while I was playing with a great singer from France named Michel Hermon. And I was the only accompanist. It was really fun because it was just vocals and accordion. So I was the entire backdrop. And he was very good at coaching me in harmonizing. developing these accompaniments. He said a song, one of these songs is like a movie.

So this verse is one scene and you need to create a backdrop. Maybe it's like a sunny day or something. Then the next verse or the next part of the song is totally different, create a different backdrop. So to me, learning about that tradition, which is a little different from the musette tradition. The musette tradition is more the waltzes, the dances, the dance music.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

That's right.

You're a very perceptive listener.

Yes, absolutely. And that's really, for me, that's almost the very beginning of my musical life. My interest in music is going to church as a kid. and hearing these hymns and feeling something stirring inside me that I couldn't describe. You know, feeling almost like a kind of truth or something that was a very direct experience and that I really couldn't put into words.

I think so. Yeah, it was, you know, clearly people coming together to be quiet and to think about serious things. My first music teacher was the artist in residence at our church, and he wrote jazz for the services. His name is Douglas Cook, and he wrote very beautiful, very dissonant music. meditative jazz that would be in the services.

So for me, that's the beginning of a lot of my what I like about music is the hymns, the music that Doug wrote in our service. And to me, it's music. That's what's great about music is it's this internal language that we can all share. It's accessible to everybody.