A Jolly Good Bellow
This lively California accordion orchestra performs at the White House and international competitions.

by jackie Saunders

When the Martin Music Center Accordion Orchestra is preparing for a performance, like the Coupe Mondiale
competition in New Zealand, it holds 7 a.m. practices on Saturday mornings. Students scurry to their seats with
their accordions, like a game of musical chairs, hoping they aren’t the last one standing. “We make practices fun,” says Sandy Martin, who founded the Martin Music Center with her husband, Randall, in 1981. "Whoever arrives last at practice has to bring doughnuts for the group on the next Saturday.”

The Martin Music Center, located in Fullerton, California, is like a second home to the accordion and piano students who take lessons there, especially the ones who are lucky and talented enough to participate in the accordion orchestra, which has held its regular practices every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. for the past 25 years. The center has been affectionately called “The Miracle on Orangethorpe Avenue,” because no matter how old a student is, he or she always seems to want to return.

"It’s a difficult group to get into and a difficult group to leave,” says Sandy Martin of the prestigious accordion orchestra. “All the kids have been here since they were really little; they don’t want to leave. We talk to each other about our problems, on Halloween we go trick or treating together, and we attend each others’ birthday and Christmas parties. It’s really a family group. It’s the sort of place you come back to if you’re home for a week visiting.”

Sandy and Randall Martin have a passion for the accordion. With three invitations to play at the White House, a Kennedy Center performance, and a trip to New Zealand for the Coupe Mondiale, a premier international accordion festival and competition, the Martin Music Center Accordion Orchestra is a top notch group. It features 18 players from ages 11 to their early 40s. “The philosophy of our group is to motivate and encourage,” says Martin, whose husband is the director of the group. "Randy goes about teaching in a clinical way. He knows how he wants a piece played, and will spend a couple hours perfecting six measures, so he won’t have to go back and reteach it.”

Although the orchestra plays plenty of traditional and ethnic accordion fare like polkas, French waltzes, Italian tunes, and classical concertos, they also play crowd-pleasing American band and folk favorites like “Orange Blossom Special” and “The Trolley Song.” When the group performed in New Zealand in the 2009 Coupe Mondiale this past summer, they even played rock ‘n’ roll classics like “Johnny B. Goode,” “Twist and Shout,” and “Jailhouse Rock.” "In New Zealand, they thought us Yanks were marvelous,” says Martin. “They couldn’t believe we played rock on the accordion.”

The thing that Martin says draws so many people to the accordion is the variety of sounds it can produce. All of the separate parts played in a traditional orchestra can be heard when the accordion orchestra plays. “I enjoy the diverseness of the instrument,” says concertmistress Michele Damien, 34, who is an elementary school teacher. "People like to pigeonhole the accordion for ethnic polkas, but we can play so many types of pieces from traditional ethnic songs to rock n’ roll. There are a lot of different flavors and that’s what the accordion is about.”

Damien has been taking accordion lessons at Martin Music since age nine and joined the orchestra soon after she began. She met her husband Larry, also an orchestra member, through the matchmaking of Sandy, who had them play plenty of polka duets when they were in high school.

One of the highlights for the Damiens was when the group was first invited by President Clinton to the White House to perform at a Christmas party in 1993. Hillary asked that the group stay later to play for the health care committee, including Senator Ted Kennedy and his family. The audience requested “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” three times.

In 1995, the Clintons asked the group to return and play for an informal Secret Service Christmas party. The group was such a hit playing in the East Room, that it became too crowded and the Secret Service had to break things up. “That was noisy,” says Martin. “It was a fun party. We played the Lion King theme, ‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King.’”

After the 9/11 attacks, White House security was so beefed up that, for the orchestra’s 2003 visit, the Bush administration requested the group leave their accordions at home as a security measure.

"I remember the Secret Service asked, ‘Could you bring your choir instead?’” says Martin. “We didn’t really have one, but the group was so talented, I called my husband and said, ‘Our group isn’t playing, but we are going to sing instead.’ We only had eight weeks to put together a choral group, but orchestra members brought their musical abilities learned from the accordion and they sounded great.”

Although the group has a talent for expanding musicianship on the accordion, the Martin Music Center Orchestra is really all about fun and being a second family to the students. The orchestra thrives on its diversity: they have three law students, an engineer, a math major, school athletes, and a teacher. "Even preparation leading up to the trips is so much fun,” says Damien. “The rehearsals and spending the time together brings us even closer.”

Another reason the group is so special to Martin is the dedication the parents have to helping their children pursue a passion for music. “Seeing children take music lessons with a purpose and a goal in mind, like the orchestra, is just thrilling,” says Martin. “It’s been wonderful to create this unusual and excellent sound from the accordion—it’s been the love of our lives and the work of our lifetime.”