NEWSLETTER OF THE

March 2012

SVAS NEXT MEETING: April 1, 2012 at Harry’s Hofbrau

VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT SVASociety.org

Joe Domitrowich’s passion is to arrange and per-form technically challenging selections that deploy the unique architecture of the accordion in new and creative ways. As a self-described “technician of the accordion,” Joe continually strives for excellence in his mission to arrange, record, and perform live on the digital accordion, intricate arrangements of diverse genres of music both old and new – sometimes reminiscent of a full band or or-chestra. His act, derived from these efforts, is dubbed “Capricious Accordion,” has been featured at the Cotati Accordion Festival, the Las Vegas International Accor-dion Convention, and the National Accordion Association Convention in Dallas, TX.

Lia Braunova Derner is a gifted vocalist and entertainer who completed her music education in Prague, first in classical and opera singing at The National Conservatory and then at the Pop and Jazz Conservatory. With this extensive technical background, Lia deploys her talents in a variety of musical genres and in multiple lan-guages. She has performed in various musicals in Pra-gue, including Cinderella, Dirty Dancing, Rusalka, My Fair Lady, Zorba the Greek et al, and has performed throughout Europe, including Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Austria and the Canary Islands. Lia currently re-sides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lia and Joe have teamed up to form Duo Interntaionale to perform a repertoire of their own unique arrangements of traditional and light opera music from various coun-tries of Europe as well as specialty tunes from the US. Look for news of their upcoming performances at Bay Area venues on the event calendar at www.capricious-accordion.com. Joe plays regularly at Esther’s Café and Bakery in Los Altos.

Joe Domitrowich & Lia Braunova Demer

SILICON VALLEY ACCORDION SOCIETY MARCH 2012

Bill Tapogna Master of Cermonies

Page 2

Bob Stanfields Sunday Seven Band Bob , Scott, Scotty , Vic , George, Gloria Bill Dick

SVAS Treasurer, Bob Stanfield’s Sunday 7 band played several songs that the audience sang to, such as Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Ain’t She Sweet, Five Foot Two, Baby Face and Side By Side. Gloria Ta-pogna and Barbara Corsiglia dueted some Irish tunes, Gloria played the recorder and Barbara played the concertina accordion. A couple of pieces they played were Castle Of Dromore and Where the River Shannon Flows. There’s Irish history behind those songs. The band played Polka Excelsior and with San Antonio Rose, Bill Tapogna soloed the first part, then Victor Corsiglia sang the rest. The band played The Entertainer. The finale was The Wild Rover, played by Victor and Barbara Corsiglia. They had the audi-ence clap the 4!, 3! 1! endings of each chorus. It’s fun to participate!

M.C., Bill Tapogna announced that March 18th would be Rick’s birthday and the audience sang happy birthday. Then Bill mentioned that Stas Venglevski would be playing

at the San Francisco Accordion Club next week.

Sue Douglas SVAS Reporter

We had a very nice turn out at this meeting. Thank you all for coming. Again we are thankful to Paul and Leah for bringing in the goodies that we all enjoy.

We discussed the up-coming PICNIC on May 6. In the past we had the Picnic off site. Usually at a Church In Los Altos. It has always been well attended, however, it seemed that some of our regular attendees at Harrys would come up missing. To minimize the missing-in-action crowd we decided to have it at Harrys Hofbrau this year. The Club will have Harrys cater it with a light lunch. We will set up tables where we can. Bill will study the table layout to optimize our stage view and enjoyment.

The $ 5.00 (door) entry fee will remain but there will be no food or lunch fee. It will be on the Club as a “Thank You “ for your participation.

I hope you all enjoyed “The Great Morgani” as much as I did. I can’t imagine standing on such a small stage and playing without falling off regularly. With regrets we have several announcements of great Accordionists passing into the next life. See the detail information on these folks on page 7.

Ken Caple President

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ACCORDION TEACHERS:

Peter Di Bono: San Francisco (415) 753-1502 Lynn Ewing: San Carlos (650) 365-1700 Sharon Walters Greyhosky: Daly City (650) 731-6010 Lou Jacklich: San Lorenzo (510) 317-9510 Marian Kelly: Portola Valley (650) 854-1896 Richard Yaus: San Bruno (650) 832-1740 Mike Zampiceni: Sunnyvale (408) 734-1565 Norma Zonay-Parsons: San Jose (408) 246-3073 Aaron Wayne: Santa Cruz (831) 332-0589 Chuck Marino, San Jose (408) 377-2504 (408) 221-6984 Sheri Mignano , Petaluma (707) 765-1657

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SILICON VALLEY ACCORDION SOCIETY March 2012 Page 4

Our first first-half player, Skyler Fell, entertained us with a few fun pieces, one of which is an Irish song called The Waxies Dargle, from way back in 1810! She does a great job of singing while she plays and she’s a smiler. She told us that she’s playing an 87 year old accordion! She knows how to keep them in good shape. It was interesting to watch her take the accordion apart and explain in detail the functioning of the bass side and the treble side. And she answered questions. If your ac-cordion needs tuning or repair, let her know. She’s totally efficient in that venue. Contact The Ac-cordion Apocalypse Repair Shop in San Francisco. And she told us to check out the Squeeze Box Stories web site on Google. Thank you, Skyler.

Our Second first–half player, William DeMichelis, with his FR7X Roland accor-dion, started out his Irish medley with Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral and showed us the different instrument sounds that are playable on the Roland. He played German, Spanish and French melodies. He says that the guitar sound is one of his favorites on the Roland. William’s a busy player, entertaining at several care facilities and

elsewhere.

Raffle-time and Ann won half the pot, George won the $20.00 Hofbrau meal ticket, Scott won the Great Morgani Music Book and Bernie won the Steve and Mike Trucco CD. Congrats!

PICNIC PICNIC PICNIC May 6, 2012

At Harrys Hofbrau

We need all of our Musicians to sign up for the PICNIC performances. It will be non-stop music and coordinated by Barbara Corsiglia. We will have a sign up sheet at the meeting or

contact Barbara. If you don’t want to play come for the FREE FOOD.

SILICON VALLEY ACCORDION SOCIETY March 2012 Page 5

FEATURED PERFORMERS

To start the Featured play time, Bill Tapogna and Bob Stanfield played several old time pieces such as La Campagnola, Down by the Sally Garden, Santa Lucia, Tyrolean Dance, Home On The Range and Red River Valley and Paul and Leah Powers, our goodie bringers, danced to some of the pieces. Then The Great Morgani, Frank Lima, came up on stage and amused us by comically putting on his full costume that covered even his face and hands and even his accordion! Then he positioned a box so that he could stand on it and play! He played Puttin’ On The Ritz, the English version of Anastasia and Funiculi Funicula and other more recently composed songs and he knew exactly which buttons to push on his cloth covered accordion to entertain us! AMAZING! He makes all his own costumes and he plays “here, there and everywhere” and this time he played for us. We’ll never forget that experience!

COMING EVENTS

WHEN THE ACCORDION CLUBS IN THE BAY AREA MEET?

Accordion Club of the Redwoods (ACR) meets on the third Monday of the month. Herman & Sons Hall, 860 Western Avenue, Petaluma CA 94952. Contact: (707) 795-4060. Golden State Accordion Club (GSAC) has three divisions: 1. The Vacaville Club meets the second Tuesday of the month at 6:30 PM, Courtyard by Mariott, 120 Nut Tree Pky, Vacaville, CA 95687, Starting January 2012 , 707 451-9000 , Dinner available and the Bar is open. 2. The Humboldt Club meets on the third Tuesday, 7:00 PM., Humboldt Swiss Club, 5403 Tompkins Hill Road, Loleta, CA 95551. 3. The Sacramento Club meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month at 6:30 pm at the Old Spaghetti Factory,12401 Folsom Rd..,Rancho Cordova CA ,95742. Contact for all the GSAC: Carole Enneking (707) 864-2359. Good Time Accordion Club (GTAC) meets on the second Wednesday of the month at 7:00 PM, Escalon Community Center, 1055 Escalon Ave., Escalon, CA 95320. Contact Ed Sciarini (209) 545-3603. Northern California Accordion Society (NCAS) meets on the first Wednesday of the month 7:00 PM 6365 Douglas Blvd., Lutheran Church Social Hall, Granite Bay, CA 95746. Contact: Vince Cukar (916) 791-3041 San Francisco Accordion Club (SFAC) meets on the third Sunday of the month 2:00 PM . Oyster Point Yacht Club, 911 Marina Blvd. South San Francisco, CA 94080. Contact Lynn Ewing 650-453-3391. Silicon Valley Accordion Society (SVAS) meets on the first Sunday of the month, 1:00 PM at Harry’s Hofbrau, 390 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose, CA 95129. (between Kiely Blvd. and Stevens Creek Blvd. Contact: Bill Topogna (408) 984-5290.

Local Festivals

Musicians from the Silicon Valley Accordion Society may be playing at the following festivals. Come out to join us .

1. COTATI ACCORDION FESTIVAL , Cotati, CA 2. ITALIAN FESTA, San Jose , CA 3. OKTOBERFEST in Downtown Campbell, CA

Who’s Playing??? William DeMichelis—Music with an accent, 408-375-0001, accordionist.sanjose@comcast.net

Reno di Bono plays the second Friday of each month at Montavalle in Scotts Valley, dancing to the Blue Moon Trio. Joe Domitrowich/Alpiners: see www.alpinersusa.com or www.capricious-accordion.com or call 408-255-1259 Mike Zampiceni - Accordionist 408 734-1565 AbsolutAccord: Schedule Concerts with Norma Parsons (408) 246-3073, www.absolutaccord.com Sunday 7 : Schedule Concerts with Bob Stanfield (650) 888-3701 Friday Night Live: Schedule Concerts with Ken Caple (408) 892-2760 Due Zighi Baci– Schedule Performances with Sheri Mignano @ sfmignano@yahoo.com

SVAS BOARD of Directors / Officers

PRESIDENT: KEN CAPLE, 408 892-2760

VICE PRESIDENT: JOHN BRANE, 408 296-5950

SECRETARY: ART MAGGIO , 408 269-4122

TREASURER: BOB STANFIELD , 650 888-3701

DIRECTORS: IVAN KLITGAARD, 408 224-5271 DICK SIUDZINSKI, 408 736-5153 BILL TAPOGNA , 408 984-5290

NEWSLETTER: KEN CAPLE, 408 892-2760

PR OFFICER: VICTOR KOLESNICHENKO 408 255-9119

SVAS REPORTER SUE DOUGLAS 408 266-3598

Coming Events at SVAS: April 1 Meeting

Doors open at 1:00 pm

1:15-2:00 pm Preprogram: Barbara Winter, Marybarbara Zorio, Marcia Coullahan, Georgia Sutherland, Eric Scheel.

2:00-2:15pm Presidents Message & Master of Ceremonies Introductions

2:15-3:00pm First Half Program : Hubert Kallabis, Rudy Pivk, Max Tarman,

3:00-3:15pm Break & Drawing

3:15-4:15pm Featured Players : JOE DOMITROWICH & Lia Braunova

MAY FEATURE AT THE PICNIC - SVAS PLAYERS JUNE FEATURE - LOUIS RODRIGUEZ JULY FEATURE - JANA MAAS

Silicon Valley Accordion Society MARCH 2012 Page 6

SILICON VALLEY ACCORDION SOCIETY MARCH 2012 Page 7

Dear and Departed We have lost some loved and respected members of our accordion world: Joe Smiell, a real force in the SFO Club, died January 27th. He was a multi‐talented musican, and performer with his band, both locally and internationally. He was conductor and arranger for the ACE Ensemble, directed the Gall‐Rini Accordion Camp since Galla‐Rini’s death, and shared his experience and knowledge freely to all over the years.

Val Kieser lost a brave fight with cancer on February 27th. She was the San Francisco Club’s good‐will ambassador ‐ always ready and eager to participate and help with everything and anything. We will miss her upbeat personality and her lovely smile! She was a real inspiration to all who knew her. Just Google Valerie Kieser’s Memorial Website to learn more about this special lady.

Frank Marocco passed away on March 3. He was a consummate musician, playing every genre of music, but his passion was jazz and he showed the world how great the accordion is as a jazz instrument. One of the many awards he received was the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Accordionists’ Assn. in 2006. He was a studio musician and one of the most recorded accordion players in the world. The Los Angeles Times, dated March 6, 2012 has a thorough re‐view of one of our great accordionists.

Val Kieser with her Fun Band at SVAS in Dec 2010.

Joe Smiell Frank Marocco

Silicon Valley Accordion Society meetings held first Sunday of each month at Harry's Hofbrau, 390 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose, corner of Kiely. Doors open at 1:00, Mu-

sic begins at 1:15, Meeting begins at 2:00 p.m. door fee $5, under 16 no charge.

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P.O. Box 1513 Los Altos, CA 94023

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