Duets With A Variety of Instruments

[Walker]

I think the accordion sounds awesome with other instruments. It sounds great with violin and guitar etc. But there are many interesting combinations:

Accordion with Cello - playing Rameau (baroque)


Accordion with Recorder - playing Luciani (contemporary)


Do you have an interesting accordion duet to share?

 

[Jeremyh]

Mandolin & Accordion, Avi Avital and Ksenija Sidorova.


The mandolin is fairly dominant -the opposite of my mandolin playing experience with accordions. I think this partly because the mandolin throws it's sound forwards, whereas the accordion seems to send it sideways, so sometimes when I play with an accordion I can hear them but not me.

 

[Walker]

@Jeremyh, you wouldn't expect a Pigini Nova to be dominated by the mandolin. Maybe the accordion is acting more as an accompaniment to the mandolin. Good combination though.

Here's an unusual blend:

Accordion and Harp

 

[vivdunstan]

I enjoy the videos from Ukrainian pair the B&B Project who combine bandura with accordion. Here’s one of theirs, coincidentally a tune I have recently been arranging myself for the solo accordion.

 

[Ffingers]

This Alpine combo has a lot of interesting material on youtube:

 

[Ffingers]

Mandolin & Accordion, Avi Avital and Ksenija Sidorova.


The mandolin is fairly dominant -the opposite of my mandolin playing experience with accordions. I think this partly because the mandolin throws it's sound forwards, whereas the accordion seems to send it sideways, so sometimes when I play with an accordion I can hear them but not me.

That lady has quite eclectic tastes - her youtube channel has a few of them.
An inspiration for any aspiring player.

 

[Jim2010]

I think this is an interesting trio with accordion.

 

[Ventura]

one of the albums i had early on was
"once over lightly"
Jo Stafford and Art Van Damme
and it influenced my entire career, as i have
believed ever since the perfect pairing is
"Vocalist plus Accordionist"

and yes, this is with the Quintet

jo stafford art van damme - Search Videos

www.bing.com

and they are nice to have, but you only really need
Jo and Art in the room

over the years i have worked with quite a few fine
Female Vocalists, often as Duet...

i even had a cool battery powered PA built into an old Bell and Howell
12" mash unit speaker cabinet w/wireless Mic that Rose's friend Electra
would pull around on a cart with us as we strolled room to room in
Nursing Homes and Rehab centers as a strolling Duet

that girl knew every WW2 hit ever charted and could sing the heck
out of 'em all day long

 

[Dingo40]

Another combination:

 

[Walker]

These guys are brilliant. Accordion and clarinet, totally in the zone:

 

[Ffingers]

These guys are brilliant. Accordion and clarinet, totally in the zone:

Now, that is what I call music-making at its most sublime.

Thanks, Walker.

 

[EMan]

Over the years when I was playing professionally, I played duets with a variety of instrumentalists and vocalists. Those which I remembered the most were with female vocalists, a clarinetist and a violinist. Actually, I worked for a entertainment contractor in NYC and the violinist and I would do cocktail parties and stroll table to table. His name was Ben Kauf ( deceased now for a long time). He and I did many many gigs together. He could make the fiddle talk and played better violin than anyone I've ever seen since. When the booker called me and told me I would be doing a gig with Ben, it was something I looked forward to.
I never liked working with pianists and guitarists. Simply, if we differed on a chord progression, it would sound horrible.

 

[Johnny]

Shout out to all the nyckelharpa players!

 

[Dingo40]

Thanks Johnny,
Something else I hadn't heard of!
See here:

Nyckelharpa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[disbo]

Very cool.. thanks for sharing

 

[Siegmund]

Here is an unusual combination of "instruments" I ran across tonight: accordion and (very) low female voice.

The effect is quite different than the more common accordion + soprano. (To tell the truth, Elisabeth Kollar-Becker's voice has a different timbre than most any alto or female tenor you've heard too.)


The posted link is the Lacrimosa from Mozart's requiem. The same two artists have many other duets on youtube; this is the one I think is most effective. I like her voice quality in their version of Schubert's Die Forelle, but they choose an unusually slow tempo. In their Erlkönig, the balance between accordion and voice is not so good, and she doesn't quite have the range of expression to sing four different characters convincingly (her Erlkönig has a wonderful smooth-but-creepy edge to it, but to my ear, her Son, Father, and Narrator sound too much alike.)

The featured accordionist also has a lot of solo classical transcriptions. I found his Mozart 25th symphony very good.

 

[Walker]

Thanks for sharing @Siegmund. You have awesome knowledge!

 

[Dingo40]

Carrilon and accordion
(For scientific purposes only!)

old comrades march accordion youtube - Google Search

 

[AccordionJustice]

Here's a beautiful classical composition featuring a viola da gamba. I hadn't heard of the viola da gamba before this video but it pairs so beautifully with the accordion.

 

[Walker]

Accordion and viola is quite good: