Leyland Accordion Club, Leyland, Lancashire, England.

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Leyland Accordion Club - 21st September 2005

 

Our September Concert

Our September concert started with Colin Ensor playing What More Can I Say, La Vie En Rose, Under Paris Skies and Getting Sentimental Over You. Then it was time for Basil Berry to take to the stage with his versions of Spanish Eyes, Around The World, Love is My Reason, This Nearly Was Mine, and finally, A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square. Our next artist was our guest artist David Vernon from Edinburgh. I have been trying to get David for many years but he has been busy with bookings or he has not been able to get down to Leyland and back again to Scotland in between jobs. This month however he was able to make the trip down to play for us. David started with a piece called Romagnola Bella before moving on to a set of Scottish tunes, The Balmoral Highlanders, Gre Green Bank Hornpipe (which he wrote himself), Blackthorn Stick (an Irish jig) and to finish the medley, Old Cambridge Hornpipe which David played as a reel. The tunes were coming thick and fast, knitted together by Davids jokes and anecdotes. The Chinese Polka and The Firefly Waltz were followed by the very popular Roulette Wheel and El Relicario. It was then back to Scotland with Wullie Wilson Waltz and The Wind That Shakes The Piggery. The next tune was Donald Ian Rankine followed by Jeans Reel. The next four tunes consisted of two hornpipes followed by two Reels. All four of the tunes were accompanied by a medley being played in the left hand on the bass buttons at the same time as the main tune was being played by the right hand. These four tunes were Boys Of Bluehill, Harvest Home, Soldiers Joy and New High Level. It was now time to finish the first half of the evening with Jacqueline Waltz. After the break and the raffle, we started again with Ray Peacock playing Destiny Waltz and myself playing a couple of tunes. It was then time for the return of David Vernon for his second session. David started with the Cuckoo Waltz which was followed by a chorus of Happy Birthday played for Harry Davies (Harry The Boat). David then played a Jewish medley which included Jerusalem Of Gold. The next medley was an American medley, starting with Yankee Doodle Dandy, the rest of the medley consisted of Turkey In The Straw, Dixie, Orange Blossom Special, Flight Of The Bumblebee and Lone Ranger. Things slowed down next for Highland Cathederal but speeded up again for a couple of reels -Masons Apron and Crossing The Minch. The accordion standard Under The Double Eagle was next on Davids playlist, followed by The Butterfly. Next we were treated to three accordion standards, Dancing Fingers, Happy Hours Polka and Bel Viso. It was almost time to finish now, so for his final piece of the evening David played The Flying Scotsman. After taking his bows and shouts of 'more' David then played Accordeonrama before the lights went up and we each went our own way home. We had been treated to a thouroughly enjoyable evening of entertainment consisting of highly accurate playing knitted together with some great jokes and anecdotes. We are already looking to see when we can arrange for David to return to Leyland so be assured he will return.
David Batty

Alan Venn Music Events


Alan Venn is once again holding an Organ Keyboard and Accordion weekend at The Mount Hotel, North Shore, Blackpool. This event, which runs from Thursday 17th to Sunday 20th of November, features lessons and entertainment during the day, with concerts each night from Harry Hussey, Ken Astin, Ian Wolstenholme and Andrew Seddon, with Ken Gorrel & Trevor Evans on drums & Bass. To find out more about this event, ring Alan Venn on 01204 840279.

 

This Wednesday

Our concert this Wednesday is another of our highly entertaining local players concerts. If you are a player of any ability then bring your accordion along and give us a performance. If you have an accordion for sale then bring that along as well. We encourage people to leave their accordions on the front of the stage if they are for sale. This gives people the chance to have a look at them in the break and at the end of the evening. There is no charge for selling accordions at the club so the worse that can happen is that you have to take it home at the end of the evening unsold. The doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. There will be the usual coffee, tea, raffle, good company and entertainment. See you there on Wednesday.
David Batty

 

Accordion Times And News Magazine

I have received the first copy of a new or reborn magazine. The Accordion Times And News has now gained a new editor and undergone a complete transformation. Gina Branelli has now joined with Loretta Rolston to produce this new magazine entitled Accordion Times International. The magazine is a full colour A4 publication. The first issue of the magazine has 28 pages of news, letters, adverts and information for the accordionist. The first issue has Details of the North West International Spring Festival, Diary Of Events, an article on Frosini. A review of the John Leslie week long teach-in at St. Audries Bay. NAO and BCA news. There is a section for people to write in and have their accordion related problems answered, details of the UK Accordion Club Challenge, some sheet music, classified adverts, a swap shop, club news, and various other articles. The magazine is a good interesting read and looks like it will be well received by all who see it. The subscription charge is £27 per year for 12 issues, which works out at £2.25 per issue compared with the cover price for a single issue at £2.50. If you would like more details of the magazine then email Accordions@BTInternet.com send your request and payment to Loretta Rolston, 11 Byron Road, Shotts, Lanarkshire, ML7 4LG

 

Christmas Party

Following an observation by Harold Bleasdale about an omission from the forthcoming nights list, I have changed the wording of the December concert from 'Local Players' to 'Party Night'. I was intending to have our usual party type Jacobs Join but had not noticed that it wasn't mentioned!

 

Our Website


Our internet website has had 85085 vistors as at 17th of October 2005, that's 1010 visitors to the main page of our website since last month. You may remember that I was counting how many entries we had on the www.google.co.uk search engine for "Leyland Accordion Club" and we had reached about 1900 web pages mentioning our club. I said at the time that I was going to give the club another push of publicity to raise this number which I did. I checked Google on 10th of October and found that there were just over 5000 entries when I searched specifically for "Leyland Accordion Club". That is a massive number of mentions for any business/company/organisation, to find 5000 entries mentioning you by name is something that most organisations dream about, as usual I can't stop there, I will give the club another push in the next month or two and see if we can increase this figure still further. With this number of people talking about us the figure should also go up by word of mouth.

 

Roland FR7-B


Roland have brought out the new version of the FR7 accordion. It is the FR7-B. The B Suffix denotes that this is a button version of the original FR7 electronic accordion. The accordion has 92 buttons with velocity sensitivity. Master Bar with Aftertouch. The Left Hand has 120 Bass buttons with velocity sensitivity and comes as a Standard, Free Bass, Orchestral Bass, Orchestral Chord and Orchestral Free Bass. The bellows feature a pneumatic detection by a high resolution pressure sensor to emulate as close as possible, the normal control given by an acoustic accordion. There are 40 User Programmable Accordion sets of tones, each Accordion Sets including: 14 Treble registers, 7 Bass registers, 7 Free Bass registers, 7 Orchestral Bass registers, 7 Orchestral Chord registers, 7 Orchestral Free Bass registers, 22 Orchestral Sounds

The Orchestral Sounds are Trumpet, Trombone, Alto Sax, Tenor Sax, Clarinet, Oboe, Harmonica, Muted Harmonica, Violin, Pizzicato, Flute, Pan Flute, Highland, Zampogna, Jazz organ, Perc. Organ, Rotary Organ, Term. Organ, Voice, Mandolin, Acoustic Guitar, Acoustic Piano The Orchestral Bass Sounds include Acoustic Bass, Bowed Bass, Fingered Bass, Picked Bass, Fretless Bass, Baritone Tuba, Baritone + Bass. The Orchestral Free Bass Sounds are Trombone, Clarinet, Oboe, Flute, Perc Organ, Ac Guitar, Ac Piano.

The Orchestral Chord sounds are Trombone, Tenor Sax, Clarinet, Trem Organ, Voice, Ac Guitar, Ac Piano. There are 16 musette modes which comprise Off (Standard), Dry, Classic, Mauge, American L/H, North Europe, German L/H, Morn L/H, Alpine, Italian L/H, French, Scottish. The accordion also has 8 types of reverb, 8 types of chorus, 8 types of delay and many other features such as casotto effects. Full details of the accordion can be found on the Roland website at
http://www.roland.com/products/en/FR-7b/

 

Accordion Festival At Blackpool

I have just returned from the new Accordion festival at Blackpool and I had a great time. I don't have time for a full report here because I have just a few hours from returning to getting this newsletter in the last post of the day!! Suffice to say the entertainment was great, we were kept on our toes from breakfast until after midnight with only a couple of 15 minute or 30 minute gaps in the organised proceedings where we could stop and rest, but we couldn't because then we could visit the trade stand when we had a minute to spare. I will give you a full run down on the festival in the next newsletter and I hope to see many of you there at the next one which is on the 31st of March 2006. You have 165 days notice of this excellent event.

 

Accordion Club Competition

I entered Leyland Accordion Club in the United Kingdom Accordion Club Challenge 2005 after reading about it on the Internet and in print. I had to put a portfolio together showing what we get up to, how we started and all the events we attend or take part in. This was a comprehensive document which ran to ten pages. The award winner was announced this weekend and I was pleased to hear Leyland Accordion Club being called. I am going to put the ten page document on the Internet for all clubs, either UK or worldwide so that they can see what we get up to, they can print it out and hopefully inspire some change at their own club, or, so that it might attract some attention from people thinking about starting their own club. I am not worried that it might inspire other clubs to emulate our ideas, because that's what I hope will happen. If the information inspires change for the better in any clubs then it will have been worth writing the document. Lets hope we win the competition next year when I go to defend our title?

 

 

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