At the moment I’m listening to the most extraordinary CD. It’s the Cadence Chamber Duet. She is Olena Yergiyeva, the violin part of the team. He is Ivan Yergiyev, and he plays the accordion.
I don’t always listen to music while writing because though music can fuel it can also falsely substitute mood which isn’t making it into words. But I do listen to music during certain points in drafts and editing, and what I listened to with UNENDING WONDERS OF A SUBATOMIC WORLD (see sidebar) was baroque. There were several pieces in particular that I listened to at points during the final edit, and one of those pieces was Albioni’s Adadgio in G, which though beautiful is such a popularly recorded piece, interpretations almost all uninspiring and mediocre, that I can go years without hearing it and feel no deprivation. However, recently, I signed up for a membership at the Classical Music Archives because I wanted access to a number of different pieces without purchasing whole CDs, and among those recordings was Cadence’s interpretation of Adagio in G.
That is how I came across Cadence.
Much of life is chore and agony, but I still get goosebumps when I come upon something exciting musically. And I played Cadence’s Adagio in G repeatedly. At first I sat and listened. And H.o.p. was fascinated as well. Then introducing it to Marty I was on my feet, the music pushing me around the room. “Listen, listen…listen to that voice…it’s amazing!” This beautiful, pure violin with this gutsy accordion, sometimes brazen, sometimes sneaky. Bold music. Pure feeling music. I’d never heard anything like it before. Completely new to my ears, this accordion chiming, chirping, wheezing, grinding, buzzing, singing beside the violin.
Ivan was made an Honored Artist of Ukraine in 2002. Olena is principal violist in the Odessa Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. Ivan is “considered a pioneer of modern Ukraninian accordion playing,” and took Grand Prix at the Orpheus Prize Competition in 1995 at Antwerp. They took first prize in 2000 at the Melody for Two Hearts Competition in Kiev,first prize in 1999 at the Vogttlandishcer Musikwettbeverbe and 2nd prize in 1999 at the Citta di Castelfidadardo Competition.
Right now I’m listening to an accordion solo, fifth song on this CD, “Schtehedrin, Hommage a Albeniz”. And I could listen to it, as with the Albioni, 40 times over. A voice, not just notes. A real voice within the music.
I’m still at a loss for how to describe this music. Fabulous, grinding grit and majesty and pathos. Ah, no shame to it at all. Can you imagine what I mean when I say music in which there is no shame, no retiring, no placing one’s self behind and inferior to the song. Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” probably best captured standard baroque when it is a sense of the inescapable machine and the tragedy and sometimes beauty of it. But this takes baroque into an entirely different, human, break-the-machine realm. But it’s not just baroque that Cadence plays. I’ve never cared before for Shastocovich, but they have two pieces on the CD and now I can hear Shastacovich’s voice and believe it, at least as interpreted by Cadence.
At least that is what I hear in Cadence, music that breaks the machine. Music that you could play when you’re on your way to meeting and dealing with some of the harshest moments life throws in your path in its most rigorous this-is-inescapable-destiny-for-all times, because this combination of accordion and violin pulls one outside the machine, and gives individual dignity. Here, as I listen a sad, brave moment is immediately followed with humor, the accordion and violin working in tandem, the violin scratching raw over these accordion bursts.
From the age of 7 to 14 I studied violin. My instructor for some reason expected me to do something with it. I supposedly had a very nice voice on the violin. I won a scholarship out of the blue and went to Brevard one summer, but violin wasn’t my life. It hardly ranked as a tiny part of it. I didn’t plan on playing violin as a career and I couldn’t make myself pursue music because I didn’t see where I could inject a voice in chamber music or the orchestra, and I didn’t want to just play notes, I wanted to say something. I didn’t excell…which I suppose is one reason my instructor kept insisting I should pursue a career in it, ironically enough. Because I never practiced, I never touched it, and still managed to I guess express a certain something. I don’t know. “If you’d only practice,” I was told week after week. I’m still befuddled at how eager my instructor (first chair of the local orchestra) and the head of the music department at the college (and conductor of the local orchestra) were to keep me studying violin. I knew how inferior I was, yet when I was 14 and told them I was quitting, they both pulled me into the office for a meeting, insistent I continue, openly frustrated and even angry that I was quitting. I couldn’t imagine why they were angry with me. I was completely befuddled. What in the world did they expect me to do with the violin that they were so adamant I keep at it? I felt totally incompetent, as if I was guessing at and faking everything I played.
I did miss it to a degree. My violin was an ancient one that buzzed and the back kept falling off of it and my instructor kept repairing it for me. I had played from when I was seven and for years afterwards, no longer having an instrument, I played air violin when listening to baroque. I once had the privilege of playing a Stradivarius and had no idea how an instrument could almost sing of its own accord. It was a couple of years after I’d quit the violin. I played one note on the strad and was so overcome by the ease, the naturalness, the purity of the sound that I put the violin down. The owner tried to get me to play more but I refused.
Had I been exposed to music such as this I might have continued. Though I might have instead picked up the accordion and dropped the violin. But I guess I couldn’t leave music completely. So I married a musician. Though not one who was classically trained. I didn’t want anything more to do with the world of classically trained musicians.
H.o.p. had never been told I played violin, and I don’t play much violin music around here, so I was surprised when at the age of five he said he would like to learn violin. He wasn’t at a stage yet to really be interested in taking lessons and said so himself. Nowadays he vacillates back and forth between violin and accordion (believe it or not). He likes the sound of both. And though Marty plays accordion, H.o.p. has never heard or seen him play it because he only plays it at Cajun gigs, so that has not been an influence. So it makes me wonder about a natural pairing of the accordion voice with that of the violin. As Marty says, you get that magic of accordion and violin in Cajun music. When he started playing accordion in the studio it was doubling string lines or using it as part of a string arrangement. A keyboardist, as I mentioned, Marty eventually picked up accordion for cajun gigs and has played it now for about 15 years. When I played him Cadence, he was floored. As with me, he’d heard nothing like this before.
Cadence doesn’t have any place online where they’re currently selling CDs, which is too bad because chamber players and accordion players in America ought to be exposed to and listening to this. There is a natural connection between the two instruments that’s magical.
Anyway, there’s not much on the web about Cadence so I’m putting this up so there will be one more thing about them. And if you’re interested, I’m certain if you write them (link to the page with info on and their email) you could arrange to purchase a CD. There are also sound files you can subscribe for free to play. And you ought to be interested. Because the music of Cadence is good for the soul music. Inspiring. Gorgeous. Spirited. Comic. Bold and absolutely riveting music.
