Accordion Boot Camp
Accordion Boot Camp is a workshop for piano accordion players of all skill levels and ages. We have fun adventures playing through easy songs and spontaneous exercises. The workshop aims to develop coordination between the hands, simplify bellow movement, and improve overall coordination. We spend lots of time going over simple mechanical movements, chord progressions, and patterns that occur most frequently in order to help our playing. It is best to bring a fully functional instrument, though we can troubleshoot some easy repairs before or after class.
About Dan Cantrell
Dan’s compositions for film and television have earned him numerous awards including an Emmy Award for KQED’s Home-Front, a Golden Gate award for the soundtrack to the documentary Divided Loyalties, and an Annie nomination for his work on three seasons of Cartoon Network’s the _Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjac_k. His orchestral music was recently featured by the Oakland Symphony, and his chamber music was performed at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and in Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. Dan composed a suite of choral music performed by the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir as part of their yearly concert series. Dan received the Gerbode grant to create the Rootabaga Opera, (a multi-media, fire-opera setting of Carl Sandburg’s classic American fairy tales), as well as the MAP grant to create Musical Fortunes, informed by Klezmer and Romani music, and performed by Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble. Dan is appreciated by directors and collaborators for his collection of odd instruments from around the world, his love for the idiosyncratic and flawed beauty found in live acoustic performance, his exploration of haunting and mysterious ambient sound textures, and a proclivity for experimentation with arcane recording techniques.