Leavenworth International Accordion Celebration, 20-23 June 2024

Gary Blair and Robin Hyland, all the way from Scotland

One of the highlights of my calendar every year is driving to the pseudo-Bavarian village of Leavenworth, WA, just west of Wenatchee on the east slope of the Cascades, for the Leavenworth International Accordion Celebration held the 4th weekend of June every year.

Two steirische Harmonikas in action at the Gazebo Saturday afternoon

It's primarily populated by piano accordionists playing popular and old-time music, with a smattering of folks on steirische Harmonika in keeping with the Bavarian theme. But they tolerate button accordion players, and a reasonable amount of light classical music.

There are 4 distinct parts to the festival:

There are classes you can take. This year I took three, one on playing expressively, one on relating better to your audience and choosing music your audience will enjoy hearing, and one on exercises to enable you to play faster with less effort. This last was taught by Gary Blair from Scotland.

Maria Telesheva

There are evening concerts Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. (The only minus to these this year was a dysfunctional air conditioner in the Festhalle, which made it not much fun to be trapped indoors from 7 to 9 every evening.)

Alphorn performance

There are competitions, for those who desire to compete; this year the runaway winner of both the classical and the open contests was the spectacularly good Maria Telesheva from Oregon, taught by her father Sergei. Her classical and open programs can both be seen on Youtube.

And, most fun of all for the casual attendees, there is free live music every afternoon, both indoors and out. This year I especially enjoyed having the Leavenworth alphorn club come out to the Gazebo and demonstrate their instrument for us. I hope in the future there might be some direct alphorn-accordion collaborations.

More pictures from Leavenworth:

The Spokane Accordion Ensemble in concert Thursday evening

The Leavenworth festival always includes an Accordion Parade down Front Street on Saturday afternoon.

Intense concentration during the competition

Detail of the bells of alphorns, each one carved from a single tree

Leavenworth is very pretty: this is Icicle Creek, a few miles upstream of town.

Looking across Lake Wenatchee toward Glacier Peak