The Second End of an Era
As I became more involved with the Office of the Commandant and Corps of Cadets, I became less involved with the USMA Band. I was conducting the Glee Club, working with the Cadet Hop Bands, and on other cadet musical activities. There was also all the activity associated with the construction of Eisenhower Hall. The very first time I ever publicly conducted the West Point Glee Club was at the groundbreaking ceremony, which for some reason was held in Thayer Hall’s South Auditorium. In size, the Eisenhower Hall Theatre is second only to Radio City Music Hall. There were specifications to be written for the concert grand piano, rehearsal pianos, Hammond Organ (often specified for rock concerts), choral risers, and orchestral shell, in addition to requirements for the buildings extensive network of sound systems.
I had planned to return to UCLA to work on my doctorate after military service and had maintained close connections with the music department. Now I was torn. After years of appearances on the Ed Sullivan and other shows, the West Point Glee Club was probably one of the most well known TTBB ensembles in the country. With the right advertisement, the club could fill nearly any major venue in the United States. I was making my living in music, working with people I thoroughly enjoyed, and had excellent job security.
I was the first enlisted member who had ever conducted the Glee Club. My predecessor was Colonel Schempf. Glee Club Officer’s in Charge started working with the academy on getting me a commission as an Army Officer. Though direct commissions outside the battle field are extremely rare, they were successful. I was sworn in as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Reserve in 1974. Their next goal was to bring me into full-time active duty. With the cutbacks in the strength of the Army, this was an even a more difficult challenge and ultimately did not happen.
I signed on for an early re-enlistment after two years to avoid the early release, but at the end of my second enlistment, I informed West Point that I was going to return to UCLA. However, they asked if I would consider staying as a civilian member of the Staff and Faculty and I agreed. My total active duty service was 5 years and 3 months.
Carolyn and I had separated after two years. As a bachelor, I had to surrender the quarters at West Point and was again living in Cornwall on Hudson. Life was a blur of activity with a lot of travel. I hardly played accordion at all. I was more interested in my Corvettes and skiing.
After leaving active duty and starting work as a civilian, I purchased my first home in Cornwall on Hudson. This brought a different type of stability and I once again started seriously practicing accordion.
The musical immersion at West Point had provided the opportunity for a fresh outlook on music. I started to understand what it was to approach music as a craft. I now head nearly 15 years experience with the bassetti system. The keyboard and fingering were now intuitive and I could master new material quite rapidly.
I started playing for select friends, feeling confident playing compositions that had terrified me years before, like Rhapsody in Blue. I expanded what I had done with some of the big transcriptions. I did some new ones. There was a lot of Bach and Scarlatti. I also had no reservations in determining which of the original repertoire I wanted to play; not feeling obligated to play something just because it was written for accordion.
One particularly rewarding experience was working with Tito on the manuscripts of his original works on one of my trips back to California. We corrected mistakes in the autography and discussed his vision and interpretation. He had separated from Silvia many years before and the spinet piano was now in an apartment rather than at 1818 Thurman. But the ashtray was still there and he did his best to keep it filled. It was the last time I saw him and I am sad that I was never able to display the results of our final collaboration in some performance venue.
I also did some composition. First was the Sonata, High Energy. The inspiration and the title came from my ongoing love of the raw energy in rock music, the potentially savage progression of rhythm and harmonic progressions, and the synergy between the musician and the audience. It took a long time for the first movement to come together, but the second and third movements channeled late one evening following a late-night cadet tribute on the darkened plain to a plebe that had died as the result of boxing class. The music flowed into my mind and when I returned home I took my accordion from the case and played. It was created in its final form and I never felt I should change any of it. I heard one of the cadets refer to the fallen plebe’s tribute as a ‘Silver Taps’, and that became my final album’s title when I mastered my 1978 tapes to CD. I had never met Richard Mull, but dedicated the Sonata to him.
In all my years at West Point I had never played a single serious performance, but in 1978 I decided that I would perform for one of the interludes of the Cadet Glee Club’s Graduation Concert. Eisenhower Hall Theatre is huge. Graduation Week at West Point is an impressive sequence of events and ceremonies. In those days, the Glee Club performance was a highlight and was the only activity scheduled for Sunday evening. Seating over 4,400 people, it was certainly the largest auditorium I have ever played accordion in. I invited Cadet Mull’s brother, who was graduating, and his parents to the inaugural performance of the Sonata. Using only a single AGC Bonham amplifier that Don Bonham had modified especially for me I sat on the empty stage in front of the 9’ Steinway. I had been in this exact spot many times before conducting both the Glee Club and the USMA Band, but this time I sat alone on the stage, facing the audience with the same Giulietti V2 that had accompanied me ten years earlier at the Sinatra Competitions.
It is nearly impossible to describe the feeling from the podium when you conduct a major symphony orchestra. You feel the strings in every part of your body, the vibration from the double basses resonating up through the floor, the ultra low frequency of the bass drum. I have heard it described as the ultimate addictive musical experience. Something you will never forget and never be able to get enough of.
I felt a similar experience that night. The music that had channeled into my soul on that late night now exploded back from the accordion in the opening of the first movement. After the reflective 2nd movement, the final movement, starting from a place of deep unrest builds to a relentless conclusion. One thing I know, I can’t take credit for how the music entered my soul the night it was given to me or how it reinvents itself during a performance. It is a gift.
I will share an interesting anecdote that relates to the Sonata. On the night that I realized the last two movements, I had finally put my accordion away. It was after 3:00 a.m. I had just closed the latch on the accordion case when the phone rang. I wondered who could possibly be calling at this hour, thinking it might be a family crisis. It was Loraine Warren, a well known parapsychologist, psychic, and good friend who lived in Connecticut. I initially met at Ed and Loraine at West Point several years earlier. She had woken with visions of me engulfed in red waves of music and was calling to see if I was okay.
Shortly after the Sonata, I began working on Compendium of Descriptive Etudes. One of my favorites is Celebrations, an etude that begins with the introduction of melodic layers exclusively in the left hand followed by an allegro built on relentless progressions of 16th note sequences. Another favorite is Cow pies, classical accordion with a humorous country-western flair. If it were written for a piano keyboard, Count Seven would only use the black keys in the left hand ostinato – except with a chromatic keyboard, there is no such differentiation.
One of the first projects I undertook in the new home was gutting the bedroom and offices that had been built in the basement. I removed everything, making one very large room. I built in bass traps and incorporated heavy sound deadening materials. I had realized a life-long dream and acquired several professional Ampex mastering tape recorders/reproducers that I had coveted from early youth. I was finally able to afford them as they were now ‘vintage’ and tube analogue equipment had not yet gained the collectable status that again drove the price up a few years later. Thanks to a good friend who worked at the Ampex East Coast Sales and Service Center in Northern New Jersey, the machines were in perfect condition. I had a 351-2 and a 354. I borrowed two Neumann 47’s from another friend and started recording. I recorded direct-to-two with no equalization or reverb, figuring I would do that later when I mastered the tapes. Bill Turowski, the sound engineer for the USMA band re-mastered the tapes at the USMA Band Building adding a bit of reverb. I also did some additional recording with Bill in the Band Building.
Though not the ideal from a technical standpoint, it gave me the opportunity to get the performances I wanted. There was almost no editing – almost everything was played in single takes. From Bill’s masters I produced about 50 cassette tapes for Julio in the album name of ‘Celebrations’. They were produced two at a time directly from the master tape. By now, Julio was in Westfield Massachusetts and the tapes were distributed almost immediately.
For some time I knew that Julio had the exact twin for my accordion. It was one of the only times I had played two different instruments that technically were so similar that I could switch back and forth with no adjustment. Julio claimed there only three such instruments were in existence. I had one, Stephen Dominko had one that Julio now had again, and this was the third. (I later came to discover there were certainly more than three Giulietti Super Continental V2s.) But I was in love with the 2nd instrument. Though it felt the same, the sound was very different. The accordion was much brighter and had the fastest left hand keyboard I had ever played – something that really made a difference on the Sonata and Celebrations. But the brightness came at a price – the accordion used a lot more air.
I would play the accordion every time I went to his place in Massachusetts, but despite my inquiries, he never made any indication he would part with it. I finally convinced him to let me use it to re-record at least some of the tracks on the album.
I redid the tracks in short order. At the time I was doing some special projects at Bearsville Sound Recorders up in Woodstock, NY, and asked the Mark Harman if he would consider remixing the album at their state-of-the-art facility. He agreed and one afternoon we added some reverb – well perhaps a little too much reverb – and some equalization. At the time, I was influenced with what Virgil Fox was doing in his rock-style ‘electric’ organ concerts. With a LOT of amplification, the bigger-than life sound was an important part of the experience. I sometimes also used a large sound system, depending on the audience and room.
Having been at West Point for almost ten years and never having played any accordion at all, I made up for it in 1978. In addition to playing at the Glee Club Graduation Concert, I also did a benefit program in the field theatre at Camp Buckner for the cadets and their guests and a solo recital as part of the Cadet Fine Arts Forum Chamber Series in Eisenhower Hall. At Camp Bucker, I used a full-on sound system. In Eisenhower Hall, I played with no amplification.
I also traveled to the ATG National Competitions that year where I performed at the concert and also was the head judge for the Nationals. It was an interesting event. Sometime in all this mix I also played a movement from GallaRini’s 2nd Concerto with an accordion ensemble aggregated for the event. GallaRini conducted and it was great fun.
During a warm up for the Camp Buckner performance I allowed someone to tape the Bach Toccata and Fugue in Dm. Normally, I was vehemently opposed to anyone recording my performances. Even when I won the Western States Accordion Festival and played at the gala concert, I was emphatic about not being recorded. I remember looking at Herb Hay right before I started to play, making sure his tape machine wasn’t running.
In an early part of the Toccata, I was irritated as I had transposed one of the dimished 7th patterns down one inversion in the left hand for two counts. I wouldn’t even listen to a replay of the tape, but took it home and stuck on the shelf with my other projects. Many years later I finally listened to it, and felt the rest of the performance outweighed the incorrect inversion. I included it on the final version of Silver Taps.
After 15 years, I felt I had finally lived long enough with the bassetti to feel as comfortable with it as I did years before with stradella. It is hard to describe the concentration that was required every second of every performance. And that continued for a long time.
But things were to change. I became even more involved with my West Point Glee Club commitments and also took on an even stronger interest in piano. I started traveling twice a week to New York City to study with Edith Opens and all my discretionary time was devoted to piano. One of the main attractions was the unending selection of repertoire. I could probably sight read 8 hours a day every day for the rest of my life and never play through all of it. I revisited some of the things I had played in the early bassetti days – like the Waldstein Sonata.
Something else that played into the equation was my general feelings about accordion. The popularity of the instrument was continuing to diminish. I didn’t perceive the accordion as being ‘cool’. I would no longer be the center of attention sitting around the campfire. I was the butt of nearly every comedian and often the subject of ridicule both on television and on the big screen. It was tiresome to continually feel the need to explain why the instrument I played was different – legitimate. To some extent, I had realized Julio’s prophecy. I could now play the works of the great masters the way they had originally been intended. However, now it meant I was playing them on piano.
A final element was expectation. I felt I would be expected to perform at a certain level. That would require practice, which required a commitment of time. Falling short of these expectations, my own, and my perceptions of an audience, was another force pushing me further from the instrument.
I emerged myself in the same situation with piano that I had when I started learning a new left-hand system. Other than notation, the technical and musical similarities between piano and accordion start and end with the layout of the piano keyboard. Many things that would be quite easy for someone with a background in piano were exceptionally difficult for me; and have remained that way. One of the most obvious is flexibility in the left-hand wrist and use of the thumb. And underlying everything is the simple fact that the piano is a percussive instrument.
Performing on the piano presented the same challenge I had to overcome when originally performing on the bassetti. I had to devote an enormous amount of concentration on technique – I couldn’t visualize the music and know the technique would be intuitive to whatever I wanted to do.
By this time, Julio had focused almost all his attention on getting the accordion recognized in the school systems. One of the final results of hits effort was a full line of bassetti instruments. Before I left California, I had ended up with one of the 12-bass equivalents of the free bassetti. It was named the “Leader 1” and the one I had was 001. I tried to teach several students the bassetti from day one. It was very frustrating and I had no success. I can still remember the first song in a bassetti method book, The Riddle. “Here is a riddle for the wise, what has three wheels and also flies?” The song alternated hands around middle C, using 3 notes in each hand. In small print toward the page, the book provided the answered the question, “A garbage can.”
I also tried to teach several of my regular accordion students the free bassetti system on one of the ‘Transformer’ models (stradella system with an imbedded, chromatic bassetti in the middle of the chord section). For the students, it just seemed to be so much more difficult for so little increased musical reward.
I even had one student who traveled the 3 hours each way from Philadelphia, PA, to Cornwall on Hudson, NY for his weekly music lesson. He arrived at his first lesson with one of the original Giulietti bassetti’s (the gargantuan dual system monster with the pedestal bassetti buttons) he had purchased from Charlie Nunzio. He traded his musical career for an appointment to the US Naval Academy a couple years later.
I still stayed in touch with Julio, occasionally traveling to his home in Westfield, MA. One of the last projects was to work with Bill Turowski in recording a Neofonic album for John Torcello after he had won the Coupe Mondiale.
I was beginning to see that the eras of Stephen Dominko, Donald Hulme, Randy Arase, and even William Cosby were gone. I wasn’t real excited with some of what I saw.
My absence from the instrument increased from days to weeks, then months, and finally years. I played piano, conducted, wrote arrangements, composed, and worked with new rock acts. But I grew further and further from accordion, feeling that maybe the accordion had betrayed me, or maybe I had betrayed it.
I brought my accordion to the party, but no one asked me to play
The war in Viet Nam was slowing down even before I entered the Army. I ended up having a high number in the lottery when it was applied to the draft. It is unlikely that my number would have been called. But with the sequence of things, it didn’t matter. I used to joke with friends about not having to worry about the draft any more; now all I had to deal with was the Army.
With Viet Nam in full swing, the Army had been anxious to get people in. Moving into the 1970s, there was now a push to get people out. The Army started a program of early release, typically cutting 6 months off enlistments.
Celebrations
Compendium of Descriptive Etudes
Silver Taps, 1978
