I studied accordion for ten years with Tulio Gasperini beginning at the age of seven. I played some parties when I was in high school and continued to do so in college. During my college years, I began switching over to piano with an interest in the Blues and R & B. I later attended the RI School of Performing Music, studying piano with Greg Wardson, Harmony with Fred DeChristofero, and other courses with Hal Crook, and played with a number of Blues, R & B, and rock bands during my twenties. At the same time, I taught accordion for a music studio (K.E.F.) for 20 years. The accordion was always my first loved instrument, and even at gigs where I was primarily playing piano I frequently brought the accordion on for several songs.
I had a hiatus from 1995 to 2005 where I practiced and played intermittently with perhaps one performance a year on the accordion. In 2005, I received an invitation to play accordion with the Blue Moon orchestra, which got me again practicing the accordion daily, and then formed Bistrobeat with whom I worked for a decade. We played a variety of original compositions and world music.
I enjoy going to accordion workshops throughout the country – Las Vegas Accordion Convention, William Schimmel\u2019s master class in NYC, and Django in June. I have also taken accordion classes with Arrigo Tomasi, and Dallas Vietty.
At Django in June, I met some like minded musicians and we formed the Bayspring Gypsy Caravan, where I played in that ensemble for the past 5 years. I also perform as a soloist playing Musettes, Bossas, and Tango, as well as Italian and American Songbook favorites.
I am grateful for the opportunity to play in the Ruk Orchestra. I love the Tango, and 20th century orchestral music. David Rukhelman\u2019s selections of music, arrangements, and conducting are a master class for me. The other performers and David\u2019s direction make for a fun and inspiring experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I studied accordion for ten years with Tulio Gasperini beginning at the age of seven. I played some parties when I was in high school and continued to do so in college. During my college years, I began switching over to piano with an interest in the Blues and R & B. I later attended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-past-member"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rukorchestra.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}