Photo by Susan Hwang
Main Squeeze Orchestra
Issue #23
The troop of 18 pigtailed musicians put the cool factor into accordion-playing
By Daphne Carr
Published: March 1st, 2005 | 2:02pm
“If, after two lessons, you can’t play a simple waltz,” said Walter Kuhr, “you get your money back.” But how many students who trek to his Lower East Side accordion store and repair shop with their very own instruments are going to quit after two tries? Not many, as there is a small but dedicated world of accordion musicians — playing polka, zydeco, merengue, klezmer, Cajun, Tex-Mex, and all brands of fusion — blossoming in the United States, and Kuhr leads 18 of them, all women, in his Main Squeeze Orchestra.
“It’s a very clever spectacle,” said Main Squeeze member Maria Sonevytsky. Indeed, their identical stage dress, black pigtails (real or bewigged), and imposing tangle of buttons and bellows is a sight to behold. And then there’s the noise.
Kuhr’s relationship with the accordion began when he was 6, in his native Germany, where his mother passed on the instrument to him. In 1988 he came to New York City to study jazz in Harlem, and the night before his visa ran out, he met his wife and decided to stay. His shop, Main Squeeze, opened in 1996 and is the only accordion shop in the New York City area.
As legend tells, the Main Squeeze Orchestra was formed after Kuhr returned from an accordion convention with visions of lovelies arranged in orchestral fashion, with changed reeds adding timbale diversity and bass accordions bringing up the bottom. He recruited from his group of students and store visitors, often spontaneously. Susan Hwang, a blues singer and instrumentalist with the New York band Murderizer, walked into Main Squeeze for a repair. “Walter told me my accordion was like a marathon runner who broke its shin but kept running. Then he asked me to sight-read a piece and said, ‘Want to be in my orchestra?’ I said yes without hesitation.”
Members range from new players to extremely advanced, and many play the accordion and other instruments in other musical projects. All have a generous sense of humor, as evidenced by their beautifully designed calendar, featuring the girls posing tough and sultry with their instruments. Considering that a full 120-button piano accordion weighs about 27 pounds, it’s easy to imagine these girls looking tough, but the sultry comes from good grace and real love for the group. “All the girls are really great — it’s the total opposite of playing with my other band,” Hwang said. “When someone messes up here, everyone is quick to say ‘It was my fault.’ For the holiday show, I asked people to bring cookies, and no one forgot. I was shocked!”
Main Squeeze Orchestra began in 2002, playing standard arrangements of classical tunes, but the group’s multitalented members began immediately to arrange their favorite songs to fit their new gig. Terri Conti, an award-winning accordion virtuoso, began with the Beatles’ “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” which led Hwang to try a blues song, Willie Dixon’s “I Just Wanna Make Love To You.” She also sings member Marianne Petit’s arrangement of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World,” an ironic vision for this striking, deep-voiced performer backed by a near army of passionate female musicians (and Walter, who conducts, most recently while wearing a blinking accordion pin on his suit lapel). She admits it’s a strange choice. “I don’t like to sing songs with lyrics I don’t agree with, and I think [that one] is a bit dated and silly. In my head I think, ‘This is a man’s world, but it don’t mean nothin’ and I just stop right there.”
The Main Squeeze Orchestra is recording in 2005 and plays primarily in New York City, although Kuhr “dreams of playing at Carnegie” and Sonevytsky dreams of “touring Germany in matching dirndls.” None dream of being on a bus together for more than five hours, though, so accordion enthusiasts living beyond New England are encouraged to send them 19 plane tickets.
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