Michael Bridge: Virtuoso Accordion

Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman is a weekly podcast with in-depth conversations featuring a fascinating variety of guests worldwide. Michael Bridge is an accordion virtuoso who performs in many styles on both concert accordion and digital accordion. In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael spoke to me about how best to engage with audiences, the subtleties intrinsic to programming digital accordion sounds, and how to forge lasting relationships. Michael was awarded his Doctorate of Musical Arts from University of Toronto, and is a prize-winning soloist and chamber musician who tours worldwide. This is also an episode which features a lot of great music, including many novel sounds you won’t have heard before from an accordion, and also with the groups Bridge and Wolak and the Ladom Ensemble. You can listen to this wherever you get your podcasts, watch the video on my YouTube, read the transcript, and use the timestamps to navigate the episode as needed: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/michael-bridge Can you help this channel and podcast with $3? ⁠https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman ⁠Thanks! 

Michael Bridge website: ⁠https://www.michaelbridge.ca/about ⁠

Michael's complete performance of Sofia Gubaidulina's Et Expecto is here, and starts at 17:40: https://youtu.be/KnXxjW4ayXo?si=qLRzkHMTajVRxhEo

Timestamps

(00:00)Intro

(02:18) digital accordion

(05:32) Bridge and Wolak “Petite Fleur”

(12:23)digital accordion user programs

(16:37) a selection of Michael’s digital accordion sounds

(19:35) accordion technique

(21:00) please support the podcast

(21:17) Michael’s accordion studies, Joseph Macerollo, history of the accordion

(28:27) growing up as an accordion player, going to the World Cup

(33:17) Bach piece

(34:29) accordiontechniques with Gubaidulina, quintuplet bellows shake

(37:46) excerpt from Gubaidulina’s Et Expecto

(39:20)  teaching accordion

(42:34) Ladom Ensemble Brahms’ Hungarian Dance no. 5

(47:26) accordion scene in Europe, premiering new works for accordion

(55:48) history of the accordion

(01:01:49) Ladom Ensemble Bach Keyboard concerto no. 7

(01:05:37) Bridge and Wolak, Charles Cozens

(01:08:24) professional relationship parrallels

(01:11:08) Bridge and Wolak “Digital Stardust”

(01:18:14) Bridge and Wolak, Ladom Ensemble

(01:22:00) performance presentation skills

(01:26:09) musical acoustics, arranging

(01:30:40) digital accordion sounds demo

(01:35:29) benefits and necessity of being analytical  

photo: Sam Gaetz