Month: November 2013

C’est Noël!

Published on by Gary ChapinLeave a comment

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1976243836/size=medium/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/

Now that Thanksgiving is past in the States, I feel okay drawing your attention to this CD by my Le Bon Truc colleague, mezzo-soprano Joëlle Morris. For this amazing collection of French Christmas songs, Morris is accompanied by pianist Bridget Convey. The whole thing was recorded at the Franco Center in Lewiston, Maine, a ridiculously good space for music. Click through to the bandcamp site in order to listen and buy.

(Apologies for the complete absence of accordéonaire content … but I’m not really sorry, because this CD is that good.)

L’Accordeonaire Tattoo

Published on by Gary Chapin1 Comment

My kids are tattoo fiends of a sort. I’ve always thought I might like a tattoo if I could get the Right Thing. That thing, of course, is my accordion, the Saltarelle Pastourelle III. I wasn’t just looking for a generic diato tattoo, it had to by My Box. My kids found an artist who could do such a thing and, as a gift, they paid for the below tattoo. The artist is Moonman Sam Hill, in Hallowell, Maine. I’ll let the work speak for itself, but I am delighted by the R. Crumb illustrative quality of it. The words are, L’Autre Diatoniste, which is also the name of … y’know … my CD.

Picture by Julia Kimball

That dime is there to give you a sense of scale and level of detail. That’s on the inside of my forearm. Also, since everyone asks, yes, it hurt like a M*&^#r F*&^%r.