Hello. My name is Shirley O'Brien.
My great fortune was to grow up in a family that made music often. My mother sang as she cooked, played records to clean the house by and played the piano for church. My father was a natural musician who could play several instruments but could chord on the piano in just about any key. He sang second-tenor in a semi-professional men's chorus that traveled to national and international venues for concerts.
There were many piano lessons and recitals through the years, but, for my 15th birthday, my parents gave me a small Baldwin organ. That gift began several years of organ lessons and I began playing the Hammond organ for church services on a regular basis. I even presented a high school senior recital with some of my friends who were studying voice. In my junior and senior years of high school, I served as the accompanist for my father's men's chorus and traveled to several states on concert tours. College presented more opportunities for music lessons but my interests leaned more toward child development and educational theory rather than music theory. Nonetheless, I continued music as a minor throughout all three degrees. My early musical training served me well in different university programs.
When I met and married Jim O'Brien, a university music professor, we began to play piano-organ duets together. Over 17 years of being ministers of music in two different churches, we made some beautiful music together.When we retired from church music positions, I sold a three-foot stack of duet books on eBay.
Although Jim always had accordions around the house, he did not play them often. But, on those rare occasions such as Easter sunrise service, it sounded wonderful. I tried to play his smallest accordion several times but could not make the melody, bass chords and squeezing action come together. I quickly gave up. After Jim received tenure at the University of Arizona, he began to bring out the accordion more often. He was asked to accompany a small strolling combo which played weddings and parties. I could see he was really enjoying this type of entertaining and that he was going in a direction I couldn't follow musically and that we couldn't share. It made me think about trying the accordion again.
In the summer of 1998, Jim organized a week long University of Arizona Accordion Camp.I was one of the participants using his small accordion. It was unwieldy and awkward for me but I was sitting beside others who were at this same beginning level and it was very encouraging. That summer I was celebrating my 60th birthday and Jim asked me what I wanted. His mouth dropped open when I said I wanted a small accordion so I could tag along and do gigs, too. On a visit to the Northwest, we dropped by Petosa Accordions in Seattle and I found a beautiful small 36 year-old Italian made accordion with the Petosa name attached. The minute I picked it up, I felt I could control it and could successfully play several simple pieces. It was a great feeling.That fall, I practiced every evening for about 30 minutes.
In October, Jim organized the Accordion Club of Tucson (ACT) and I became a member. We began building an ACT book of songs and prepared a repertoire of show songs to perform. With the club in matching outfits, at times, there were as many as 19 people on stage for a performance. We played for dances at RV resorts and retirement homes plus many other venues. It was a great way to learn the accordion surrounded by others of your skill level or much better.
Jim began to write arrangements for accordion duets and one of the first ones he wrote was Hungarian Dance #4. It had a simple repetitive melody that required me to focus on only two things: one finger melody and squeezing the bellows in and out. We performed this duet at a family reunion to great applause. I was hooked. My big discovery in playing the accordion was that if the music was memorized you could catch the eyes of the audience and get reactions to your music which was impossible with organ music.
Over these past eight years, we have played accordion duets in front of large audiences. Our favorite would be the 2000 folks who attend Christmas Day dinner at the downtown San Diego Convention Center. Several years ago Jim was gracious enough to invite me to accompany him on two of his three compact discs, which provide a lasting memory of my early struggles to play correctly. Now that we have retired, we travel with our accordions in our motor home and find we have wonderful audiences in many campgrounds and RV resorts. But lately, our favorite travel gig is the German Oktoberfest. We even have authentic German outfits to complete our Bavarian image.
The accordion has provided me will an avenue of music-making that I never had with other instruments. The music played on the accordion and the sound of the instrument itself is bright, uplifting and encouraging. I am so grateful for Jim's gift of an accordion on my 60th birthday and for his encouragement for me to continue to learn how to play it.