KATHERYN PETERSEN

I have had a busy year Teaching the Accordion and I am enjoying the range of students that have come through the door. My students range in age from 6 to 80, and hail from backgrounds as diverse as Czech, Bretton, Irish and East Indian. Their musical preferences are just as colourful and I have transposed, and worked with them on allot of fantastic music. One of my favorite teaching experiences was this Fall in Dunster where I gave three days of workshops as part of the Songbirds Moveable Music School. The drawing posted here is of one of my students. Her sister drew it and they gave it to me at Christmas. It is one of my favorite images and reminds of what a joy it is to play.

Yesterday I played for CLICK (Contributing to Lives of Inner City Kids) at their promotional day on Granville Island at 1000 Villages. If people wanted to contribute they could ask the people at the till to put 15% of their purchase toward CLICK. I had the honour of contributing musical festivity to the event with my accordion. There was a genuine sense of joyousness and for the first time this season I really felt like Christmas was in the air.

Just back from two amazing weeks on the snowy road with Joanna Chapman Smith and Mat Martin. Despite the daunting driving conditions of traveling through blizzards and frozen Ice Fields of BC and Alberta, the sites were spectacular, the music was sublime, and the people who we met and played for more than well worth it. It seems to me that there is something galvanizing about surviving extreme conditions together and particularly as bandmates –however shortlived. We have one more show together in this configuration, as “Joanna Chapman Smith and the Adequates”. Joanna and Mat leave on their train residency on Tuesday the 29^th. After that Mat heads back to England and Joanna stays in Toronto to spend the holidays with her family. So I am sad that my little band family is splitting up so soon. It has been a particularly exceptional combination of talents and sounds which may or may not have future tours together –too many unknowns right now for three people based out of three far separated cities. So I am suggesting that if you want to hear what we have been up to that you join us for our last show this coming Sunday, November 27^th. It is a house concert that we are sharing with the End Tree boys. If you are interested in coming out drop me a line through my contact page and I will give you some deets. Harumble for that!

Renee de La Prade and Amber Lee Baker of the The Accordion Babes Calendar fame are coming to town this November 4 & 5 to present their 2012 edition of the Accordion Babes Calendar. Accordion Noir is hosting and has invited me to perform with them on Friday night the 4^th at Spartacus Books. This will be a rare evening and I am sure the show will be packed. As such, I am busy right now cooking up something special for the event that I am entitling “Salmon Avalanche and the Jellyfish Orchestra”.

I just got back from a weekend workshop with Sadie Nardini. It was empowering. I discovered Sadie (who is based in New York) on line in the early spring this year and have been following her off and on since. She is clear and intelligent and has exceptional lightness in her form. I was keen to learn more about what makes her practice tick. She focused on different aspects of what she calls the inner core line and applied that to lots and lots of lifts like handstands, shakti kicks and crow poses. She also showed us how that inner line affects all the postures and generally how we connect our bodies to the earth. What was so exciting is that she tangibly confirmed to me things that I have in past intuitively felt to be true about how the body moves. I took lots of notes and am excited to integrate this material and pass along what I have learned to my yogic community.

I have been playing with Los Portenos, traditional tango band, now for about a year. It is  complex and beautiful music and I have had to learn many of the songs in several keys to accommodate singers and such. I feel like I am just beginning to understand the feel of the music and I am thriving with the camaraderie of being in a band again. Los Portenos is lead by the lovely Michelle Cormier and consists of varying combinations of two violins, guitar, gitarone, piano, myself on accordion and a singer. This weekend we play for a Milonga – a tradional tango dance event.

In November I am going to be on a BC/Alberta tour with Joanna Chapman Smith and Mat Martin. It will be our first time touring as a trio and I am really looking forward to hearing the combo of Joanna’s luxe vocals and inventive musicianship, Mat’s stellar clawhammer banjo playing and my squeezebox fortifications all together at one time. ‘Twill be a crazy love indeed. In the meantime I am trying my hand as a booking agent helping to put the whole thing together. Wheee! Fun times planning a working road trip!

Yoga continues to be a huge gift in my life. Since this September I have been teaching regularly now for a year on Wednesday afternoons at Kerrisdale Yoga. Recently I have also started teaching two noon hours classes for different office groups on thursday and Fridays. Teaching is helping me to learn to become more available to others and pushes me to maintain a rigorous personal practice. That said I am going to be doing a weekend long workshop with Sadie Nardini from New York at the end of this month. Very excited. Sadie is one of my top influences.

“All hands on the Poop Deck?” Last week I did a studio quickie recording for a local production company that is proposing a new kids show. The theme song is a piratey punk kind of deal, for which the client had requested accordion at the last minute. My friend called me up and the next day I went by the studio and gave them my best pirate accordion riffs. Wierd thing was the song was in F#. What kind of pirates play in F#?

Still pinching myself about having been part of the quartet that recently recorded Elliot Vaughan’s brilliant soundtrack for the play “From Whence He Came”. This is the first time that I have had the experience of sitting in for an all day session with orchestral players. I felt like any minute someone was going to stand up and say, “Wait a minute –why is there an accordion in the room?” Elliot is a truly adventurous and delightful composer. His score made me do things with my accordion that I had never even thought of before. One song was all scripted bellow moves and key clicks! It was an adventure in accordion playing that I will not soon forget. The material is surreal and savagely beautiful and I have adopted the solo accordion piece Rose’s Gift (above) as one of my bastard children. You can hear and even buy some of this magical potion right here.