Guy Kawasaki’s

Entrepreneurs, re-enchant the world!

There are people who see the workings of what Max Weber called the “disenchantment of the world,” a sort of inevitable sinking in their daily lives caused by an array of factors – good and bad reasons, from nostalgia for a Golden Age that may never have existed to disillusionment or dissatisfaction with a job. Meanwhile, there are those who believe in the possible re-enchantment of the world, creators and visionaries who want to make a difference – entrepreneurs. They want to enchant, and to share their visions of a better (or rather, bettered) world. As a result, they are able to withstand cynicism, skepticism, stasis, blasé attitudes, and resignation. This is the subject of Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment.

The term “enchantment” evokes dreams and myths, and the apparition of miraculous fairies and omnipotent sorcerers. It represents the carefree joy of childhood, when everything still seems possible. We use this word almost inadvertently when we refer to the small marvels of our day-to-day lives: love at first sight, a baby’s smile and its first, tentative steps, or discovering something that previously seemed unimaginable. Almost inadvertently, we realize that the world around us, while giving us grounds for lament, is also rife with ways to fill us with wonderment in which we can abandon ourselves, as well as ways to make others do the same. For example, Skype, a practical tool in a business context, becomes a magical means of bridging divides when used to talk to a far-off loved one.

In order to enchant others, let yourself be enchanted

As adults, we are often reticent to let ourselves be enchanted, mostly because we are afraid to seem overly naïve or gullible. Instead, we fashion aloof personae, believing ourselves to be more intelligent when we protect ourselves with skepticism and condescension. But the more we live within the largely arbitrary confines of this dogma, the more we are limiting ourselves to the status quo, as we become unable to sense the vibrations of innovation stirring both in others and in ourselves. So begins the vicious circle of boredom in which so many blasé self-proclaimed “realists” are trapped: as they shut themselves off from the creative pulse that surrounds them, they are increasingly unable to imagine ways to transform the world that so dissatisfies them, or charm the people from whom they feel alienated. Numb to the sensation of wonderment, they are left with no means to amaze others. Tedium begets tedium, and only boring people are bored.

According to the recently deceased Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever (1913–2010), “Childhood alone does not age[1].” You should not allow the capacity to believe a good story that you had as child disappear if you want to be able to enchant others. Whether or not we are willing to admit to being taken aback, fascinated, or amazed by someone or something, allowing ourselves to be, means regaining energy and enthusiasm. We are able to look forward creatively and connect to the people that surround so that they can share in our breakthroughs or happiness. Enchantment is contagious. It is an indispensable starting point, although it is only a starting point: all the artistic interest in the world alone cannot and will not make a Van Gogh of anybody. Nor is it enough to be enchanted to become a great enchanter. Like in any art, the road to excellence follows a simple formula: 10% talent, 90% work. This book’s aim is to help readers in their approach and understanding of the 90%.

Construct your MAGIC

The strength behind any enchanter is MAGIC, or, in other words, his:

• Mastery: If you have ever seen Steve Jobs on stage, you will agree that he is incredible. This is not necessarily because he has the charisma of an actor, but because he is prepared beyond anything you can imagine.

• Authority: An enchanter knows what he is talking about; he is competent and strong. He possesses in his rhetoric what the Greeks called ethos (ἦθος): the quality that allows a speaker to capture the attention of his audience and to instill confidence by means of his credibility, his knowledge, and his moral competence.

• Generosity: An enchanter is able to convey a likeable image because his goal is above to give to his audience, and not to find self-validation or to force people to love and admire him. Instead, he transfers his own power to his public.

• Imagination: An enchanter sees and understands the environment of the people listening to him in order to overcome their reticence or skepticism, and to open their eyes to greater possibilities.

• Commitment: Enchantment entails a human relationship, either face to face, or by means of technology. Every enchanter dreams of making a lasting connection, or one whose echo is still present in the people he has reached, either because they still use the product he has showed them years ago, or because they still remember it fondly.

Hone your art

Every chapter of Enchantment is a guide that insists you work on your weak points while strengthening your strong ones. How do you smile? How is your handshake? And so on: these are small details about which you probably no longer think, as deeply entrenched in the definition of yourself as they are. Often, they are so much “in your nature” that they are no longer really in your current nature at all, but merely ghost remnants of what you were a decade ago. Remember that every new pair of eyes you encounter will look upon “you” subjectively as you are in the moment, and not with knowledge of who you once were. Perhaps you have become patronizing without fully realizing it; your smile is no longer a genuine gesture but a vague stiffening around your lips, or your handshake has become a limp motion without any real eye contact or warmth… It is as much work to create enchantment in oneself as it is to create it in others!

Reality Check was a sequel to The Art of the Start. Enchantment is simultaneously a third installment in the series and a sort of prequel. Honestly, if you have no desire to charm anyone, how are you ever going to successfully start a company? From where will you draw enthusiasm for the day-to-day realities of your corporation if you do not see that you must win over and connect with your employees, co-workers, and clients? If you do not let yourself be won over by them in order to renew your own energy and drive? With this in mind, this book is undeniably an important learning tool, rather than a diaphanous essay.

This book presents a set of techniques, which are not necessarily enchanting in and of themselves – the point is not to lull you with rose-tinted storybook fantasies. It is to dissect for you the mechanisms behind the process of enchantment. For instance, Kawasaki’s anecdote about his guests’ reaction to garbage cans at his home is not particularly enchanting (although certainly amusing), but it does bring home a key idea: anticipate people’s reactions in order to influence their behavior! After all, musk can be a revolting smell for many, but it is also the base of some of the most beautiful and attractive perfumes. In this case, the metamorphosis is in the way its parts play within the whole, the MAGIC of the perfumer who brings them all together.

Learn from the MAGIC of others…

… And, of course, start with Guy Kawasaki. He knows what he’s talking about. He is not a university professor orating conceptually on the art of influence or a psychologist dissecting the behavior of human test subjects, although he does draw from such research. He is a practitioner in the art of enchantment – I was struck by this the first time I met him, in 1986. I had just arrived in Silicon Valley, and I had never heard his name. I learned that he was a Macintosh evangelist in the United States, although I wasn’t quite sure what this was supposed to mean. (I was particularly puzzled by the religious connotations of “evangelism,” which was not a word used in this context in France at the time.)

And then, one day, I understood: watching him speak to a group of developers, noticing the way he mixed a genuine desire to win over people with a certain attentive nonchalance. He made telling his story an art form, with such mastery that there was never rigidity in his demeanor, his tone, or his style. He was not trying to impress for the sake of impressing. The focus, although on him, seemed to be guided toward all those who were listening. People came to him easily because they wanted to follow this enchanter. That day I understood how he had won over so many brilliant programmers and maintained their interest in Macintosh even after Steve Jobs’ universally traumatic departure in 1985.

When, the following year, I asked if he wanted to be president of the company I was creating. He answered me “Really?” with a smile – a genuine smile that caused little crows’ feet to appear at the corner of his eyes. Then, quickly, he agreed. But it was not until a few days later that I was really enchanted, when, upon reading a New York Times article, I discovered he was far more famous than I had ever imagined. Real enchanters don’t need to impose their power and renown; they own them and keep them through the elegance of their humility.

If you think I am too partial because I have known Kawasaki for more than twenty years, go hear him talk. You see dozens of individuals who have never met him take a seat in the room, and you see them leave different from how they were when they came in. They are smiling; they are happy. They begin to speak to the people around them. All of a sudden, they find something to share with the world. They have been enchanted, and they are ready to become enchanters in their own right.

We like to learn from living role models and marketing books. Famous figures of the past are equally inspiring, and the principles for success almost timeless….

An adventurous entrepreneur, Helena Rubinstein: I recently read Michèle Fitoussi’s Helena Rubinstein: La femme qui inventa la beauté (The woman who invented beauty, Grasset 2010), a new biography of the woman behind one of the original cream and cosmetics mega-corporations. Rubinstein, born in a Jewish ghetto of Krakow in 1872, was not a likely candidate for fame and riches. Her father was a generally unsuccessful shopkeeper more interested in the Good Book than his accountability books. As a woman, Helena’s main pre-ordained purpose was to marry young and as well as possible (the fact that she was the eldest of eight girls, all of whom would need dowries, made getting her married off a particularly pressing matter for her parents). However, the stubborn and intelligent bit of a woman (standing at only 4’10”) would have none of the potential suitors – she wanted her own life, and a life far more glamorous than her Orthodox neighborhood could offer her.

In her early twenties, she took a ship to Australia, where she would work for one of her expatriated uncles in Coleraine, in Western Victoria. (Her parents, presumably, could only shrug off this far-flung exile as their unmarried daughter’s earned lot). The conditions were rough, and particularly for the rather dainty Helena, who was only accustomed to city living. However, she was also an avid worker, and not content to remain forever stranded among rough men and herds of sheep. It would take her several years to find, but she did finally hit upon her exit strategy – to develop and sell a face cream to Australian ladies eager to remedy their sun- and wind-damaged skins.

The art of living and breathing marketing: Here are the beginnings of an international corporate empire They are humble and quasi-accidental, which is the case of so many of the major brands that shaped the twentieth century. Helena Rubinstein’s start-up had all the right factors for success: a good idea with good timing, obsessive amounts of work from its founder, and brilliant positioning. What is so engrossing about this entrepreneurial saga is how much Rubinstein consciously and carefully created her brand and her image. She lied, or rather, she re-arranged facts, beautifying reality. She was certainly not the first or last to do this, but she did it with a keen sense of consumer demands and needs. She not only sold the benefits of her creams and, later, cosmetics, but her entire persona as well, letting herself become in people’s minds a glamorous woman of wealthy, perhaps noble origins. When she launched Velaze, her first cream, she positioned it as the recipe of a world-famous European doctor containing exotic ingredients. She purposefully overpriced her product, recognizing that women wanted to buy luxury. She established a salon where she enticed journalists to come try her skincare line. In short, Helena Rubinstein, from the very beginning, lived and breathed marketing.

The result of her work ethic (or perhaps, more accurately workaholism) coupled with her fantastic imagination for selling herself, her company, and by extension her goods, is a company that made her one of the richest women of her time. She was, in the truest sense, a self-made multi-millionaire. Her model, although in some ways specific to her field and time, is also universal, and her business adages hold true for entrepreneurs of any time:

• Find something worth selling that people actually want to buy.
• Devote yourself to formulating a product that can compete against others.
• Know what your consumers want so that you can market to them specifically and successfully.
• Always be ready to adapt to evolving needs and trends.

The fact that so many brands that have become institutions today followed a similar structure and growth pattern is no surprise: no matter the period or the product, the bases of human interest and interaction remain the same.

More about the author, Michèle Fitoussi (in French).

My mother is currently finishing up her French translation of Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, which comes out in the US on March 8^th. As in past translation work she has done, I’ve been providing irregular advice on how to adapt certain phrases or anecdotes in a way that conveys the comfortable, conversational tone of the original English. And I’ve also taken the opportunity to read the book myself. I’m not necessarily the immediate target demographic as an opera student. However, the book’s theme is in fact right up my alley, as I attempt to enchant audiences every time I sing. In fact, having heard the pitches of dozens of entrepreneurs since I was born, I realize that enchanting is at the base of any human interaction.

I love that Guy has readers share their own stories at the end of each chapter, as they show the breadth of what experiences have a lasting effect. I myself was not initially introduced to Guy Kawasaki as a business man, or a start-up guru and author. As the president of my mother’s American company, ACIUS, he was throughout my childhood the man who had given me a nearly life-size stuffed tiger when I was a baby. Photos abound of me through the various stages of my being able to keep myself upright, at first merely smiling at this gigantic (but apparently gentle) creature on the ground, and later riding courageously on its shoulders. And now, two decades later, I still have not only the toy, but also the set of memories that goes along with it. Guy’s gift amazed me as a small child, conjuring exotic forests and fantastical adventures in our Paris apartment, and still enchants me as a young adult.

Of course, my tiger is not strictly a case of business enchantment, but it isn’t so far off, either. The gift was so peculiar and particular that it stuck, not only with me, but with my mother as well. Being able to affect a colleague’s child so much also means making a lasting impression on the person with whom you work. The enchantment was deeply entrenched in both of us because the gift was not merely a bland token of respect sent without thought, one of the dozens of nameless and faceless stuffed animals I received in the first few years of my life from people who were themselves to remain nameless and faceless to me. The grandiose and whimsical nature of my tiger made the gift personal, and has made me associate it with the ACIUS team, and Guy in particular, ever since. The tiger has born its fruits, as I’m reading Guy’s books twenty years later!

I recently went to a master class given in the context of the Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute (BASOTI), an intensive summer program for pre-professional singers founded by Sylvia Anderson in 1992 that my daughter Sophie Delphis is currently attending. This master class was given by BASOTI’s Artistic Director, Yefim Maizel, a well-known and remarkable stage director. After graduating with a master’s degree in violin from the Riga Conservatory in 1980, he earned his master’s degree in opera stage direction from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1987 and moved to the United States in 1989.

Yefim Maizel’s master classes are different from the ones generally offered to students pursuing singing and opera — that are provided by famous opera singers or esteemed teachers who concentrate on technique and vocal interpretation. Maizel comes to the master class form from a director’s point of view and focuses exclusively on helping singers make an aria comprehensible and believable to people who, more often than not, do not understand Italian, German, French or Russian.  And very quickly, his teaching evolves around a key double-statement: Understand what you say and live it out through meaningful gestures. Yes, it’s that simple, except that it’s awfully hard. For singers – and guess what? — for entrepreneurs, too.

Here is one of the main reasons why people don’t care too much about opera: They don’t understand, and singers rarely help them because many of them do not have a thorough understanding of what they actually sing, of the words – and as a result, they are unable to act out these words accurately. They have an idea of the general meaning of what they sing, but rarely a true comprehension of the words themselves and their connotations: in other terms, of the details that give sentences their structural thrust. As a result, singers often indulge in meaningless, approximate or irrelevant gestures, and even worse, reproduce what other singers or teachers have done before, removing themselves even further from any direct comprehension of the actual pulse of the text they sing. For example, why do so many tenors let their arms dangle along their body or keep them on a table as they invite their beloved Manon to share their vision of future happiness in the country side, when a more natural move would be to extend one arm towards the horizon in order to enable both Manon and the audience to project themselves into the paradise of brooks and foliages they are summoning? Sure, the music is divinely romantic, but as Maizel said for another aria: “Don’t float in the music, actually exist in it, cut through it.” Open up, tap into real emotions and into what the words actually mean, give the whole story, and expose a life to which people can relate through concrete moves, gestures and focus points. All of the six singers I heard improved by an order of magnitude when they started to engage their audience through a deeper awareness of the meaning of what they were saying. They began to turn into real people involving the audience into their thought process – conjuring up the secret magic that drives believability.

Every entrepreneur getting ready to pitch anybody should just watch this type of master class to get a sense of how things either resonate or vanish into thin air. Not only is learning through analogy a powerful way of reflecting on one’s own art and demeanor, but entrepreneurs are actors in many respects. Entrepreneurs do play a role, a role that they have created for themselves (and hopefully is close to them), and they have to connect to stage/company partners and to their audience — customers, partners, VCs, etc.  Just as singers, when entrepreneurs give their pitch, it’s very easy for them to basically only go on script rather than remembering that they must actually believe in what they are saying. They have to keep in mind that they are trying to sell what they have in exactly the same way a singer has to sell to an audience on what his or her character is trying to say.

So forget about all the vague industry buzzwords that don’t rhyme with anything in you. Don’t strike unnatural poses, move your hands, your head or your body with a purpose – and sing your story with the right tone and intensity – the right voice pitch — to make it easier for people to relate to you!

There is often a very special high energy about startups — all types of startups. That’s what I felt when I arrived at the RESONANZ opening gala. A non-profit organization, RESONANZ is starting its first year as a new three-weeks program for young singers in Albany, N.Y.

How do you start something in the midst of recession times, in a domain that’s not the most popular genre on the planet, in a city that’s not a destination for tourists, in a Summer season where the town has been emptied from its regular students and retinues of the State’s elected officials? How can you even think of doing this when performing arts in the region essentially means the Tanglewood Festival in the Berkshires, the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, the Bard College Summerscape… to name just a few famous centrifugal forces? “Well, when you want to do something,” says Heidi Skok, the founder and Artistic Director of RESONANZ, “you don’t sit on all the reasons not to do something, you look at all the reasons to do it, and for me, all these reasons boil down to one: I live in this community, I am happy to live here, and I want to contribute to the life of this community as meaningfully as I can. My thing is music, and more specifically opera. So, I can do two things: bring people to Albany, both students and faculty, who would have never known how great this town is on the one hand, and bring opera through young voices to people who don’t know they could enjoy it. After years of performing in various places, years of teaching voices, I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people don’t like opera simply because they know nothing about it, but the minute you bring it to them, they readily admit that they didn’t realize they could enjoy it. If every classically trained singer were to bring opera back to his/her community, the performing arts wouldn’t be in any form of crisis whatsoever. I completely agree with what Russell Willis Taylor said in an interview you posted on your blog earlier this year. Just as any professional, we have to do a better job of showing the unique value we add, and reach out to our own communities if we want them to come to us.”

The project started as a an idea in Heidi’s kitchen, in Glenmont, just seven miles away from downtown Albany, as she was speaking with a student, Katherine McDaniel who had come from Texas for private lessons last Summer. The idea matured quickly and by February, the company was incorporated as a non-profit, had a Board of Directors, an Executive Director, Diana Hernandez, a budget and a fully-fledged program, and a Web site — created by another student, Jessica Utset. Think of the rush to get students, build up a faculty, find a place and a few grants to be up and running on July 19^th! The result is that students signed up from various parts of the country (and not simply students Heidi knew from before, as was the case for my daughter, Sophie, whom she taught at the New England Conservatory). Heidi and Diana found a great location: The College of Saint Rose (how many voice programs have access to an Olympic swimming pool?), and were able to attract the interest of the Albany community on a definitely short notice. What I saw at the gala is that the donors had already made the program theirs. Heidi has assembled a remarkable faculty, including Susan Harwood, Sheryl Woods, Bill Neill, Jeremy Frank, Martin Hennessy, Roger Malouf, Arlene Shrut, as well a meditation guru, Lance Brunner (also Associate Professor of Musicology), MaryBeth D. Smith from the Feldenkrais Center of Houston, and local yoga instructor Susan Hoffman. Incidentally, William (Bill) Neill, who has traveled the world, taught and coached many well-known singers (including Ben Heppner), a Don José who spoke to Carmen in multiple languages, did admit to me that he had never visited Albany… and not yet its most famous restaurant, Angelo’s 677!

A few students backstage (photo MaryBeth Smith)

The program, coupled with a Concert Series of seven performances open to the public, is noticeably different from what is most customarily offered to young singers. “Young singers, singers altogether, aren’t just machines that you crank up and bang! they sing. They have a body, they have a soul, they are human beings, and the voice is the expression of who they are as a person. It’s unfortunate that schools and conservatories rarely include meditation, yoga, Feldenkrais, and sports as part of the curriculum as I believe they should. I want the students to be in a situation where they can give the best of themselves at any stage of their personal development. It’s just as hard to be a singer as it is to be an athlete. We have to help them build a personal discipline, care for them.” And it’s clear that RESONANZ cares. In fact, I was very surprised to find out that the site doesn’t only provide bios for the Faculty, but also for the students! In short, they are not simply anonymous entities paying for tuition fees.

Heidi Skok and Diana Hernandez are already outlining their strategy for the months to come and definitely plan to continue this Summer program.

Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

For more information:

About RESONANZ: http://resonanz-rasif.com/Home.html

About Heidi Skok: http://www.heidiskok.com

Heidi refers to a post that I wrote in March 2009. Russell Willis Taylor is the CEO of National Arts Strategies: http://delbourg-delphis.com/2009/03/the-recession-an-awakening-experience-conversation-with-russell-willis-taylor/

Guest Author: Sophie Delphis

The May 9^th Osvaldo Golijov and Dawn Upshaw Young Artists Concert, the first of two showcasing eight young composers and their original commissions (unfortunately, I was unable to attend the second concert), was an experience that is seldom afforded to audiences. The atmosphere in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall was familiar and excited – here were rows of seats filled with the devotees of the composers and performers of the evening. We were all partners in crime.

Attending a concert of new music is a tricky affair and represents polar opposite possibilities: will the program be the discovery of an exciting new voice? Or… not. As I am used to new music evenings that are, at best, uneven in their ability to hold my interest, I was happily surprised to find that I was never bored by what I saw and heard before me — far from it, in fact. I was consistently curious to see what would unfold in each of the four pieces. Even in those instances when I did not like a compositional or interpretational decision, I remained connected. This is the testimony to the four works on the docket; if there was a theme in style for the evening, it was each composer’s compulsion to grab the audience. We were not alienated by artists too caught up in their ideology to care whether we were along for the ride or left on the doorsteps following the program notes to pass the time. Kudos to Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin for his Niña Dances, Paola Prestini for her Oceanic Verses, Matti Kovler for Here Comes Messiah!, and David T. Little for his Scenes from Dog Days. All four premières were supported all the more by strong performances from the vocalists as well as the workshop ensembles, and remarkably conducted by Alan Pierson.

Matti Kovler’s Here Comes Messiah! 

It is not surprising that I felt a particularly strong connection to Matti’s piece: I was there namely as part of his retinue. I am also familiar with his compositional idiom, and Here Comes Messiah! was clearly marked with the Kovler stamp. Matti’s instruments are not merely textural tools, but characters themselves. As the piece began, the breaths and physical movements of his solo singer, Tehila Goldstein (see picture with Matti), were echoed and magnified by the ensemble. From this point, there was no question that we were not watching a poem with orchestral accompaniment, but instead the group effort of a large cast of players – in which extraordinary poet-translator, Janice Silverman Rebibo unambiguously belongs. It was particularly in the second part of the piece that this group dynamic gained a strong hold over the audience’s attention. In the climax before the third and final part, the performers’ grip on the room was visceral, tangible, in a series of fortissimo pulses (labor pangs) from the instrumentalists, and exclamations from Tehila Goldstein. Here the expressivity she had already demonstrated earlier intensified exponentially, in her face, her stance, the timbre of her voice. Matti was at the piano, and he brilliantly made use of it in this passage, as both a harmonic and percussive instrument, driving the sound of the others around him. 

Although his part in Here Comes Messiah! is less central than in his Cokboy (performed earlier this year in Boston), and the work revolves around a woman’s experience in child birth, it is, nonetheless, entirely an extension of Matti himself. He is wholly present in his music, and not simply because of his compositional language or aesthetic. The audience does not need to be introduced to the composer, or his thought process, to become privy to his internal world – he wills us to come in. 

Additional information

Lev Zhurbin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Zhurbin

Paola Prestini: http://www.paolaprestini.com/

Matti Kovler: http://mattikovler.com/. My mother and I also wrote a post about Cokboy last January: http://delbourg-delphis.com/2009/01/matti-kovler-artist-entrepreneur-great-products-always-carry-a-great-vision/

David T. Little: http://www.davidtlittle.com/

Janice Silverman Rebibo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janice_Rebibo

Tehila Nini Goldstein: http://www.meitar.net/bio_En.pdf

Alan Pierson: http://www.alliedartists.co.uk/artist_page.php?tid=1&aid=103

Update Sept. 3, 2009: Cory Pesaturo is the first American to win a World Accordion Championship for the United States in 25 years. The competition, called the 62^nd Coupe Mondiale World Accordion Championships, is the most prestigious International Accordion competition in the world, and this year, was held on August 25-29, 2009 in Auckland, New Zealand. Below is my original February post: 

Cory Pesaturo, 22, is the only student who ever graduated as an accordionist (2008) from the New England Conservatory (NEC), the oldest conservatory in this country, located in Boston. “I didn’t go to NEC to study accordion,” Cory says. “I had had fabulous teachers, such as Tulio Gasperini, and later, Lou Ludovico. I was 17, and I had already won several competitions. At that point, what I was looking for, was to become a powerful musician. NEC’s Contemporary Improvisation and Jazz departments are among the best in the world; they’re quite open about accordion and know that it’s becoming cool again, and they gave me fantastic training in multiple musical genres from folk styles to classical and, of course, jazz. Now, I am out there to help people enjoy the multiple facets of this instrument.”

Death and Transfiguration: There is a better way…
In music, just as in any domain, the entrepreneurial fearlessness starts with the strong conviction that “there is a better way…” Entrepreneurs innovate by bringing new ideas but also, and more often, by revisiting, challenging, or reframing established concepts, methods, or products. “I am kind of a rebel in the accordion world. Part of the tradition hampers the perception of what you can do with an accordion.” Cory says. “Some accordionists play the same tunes over and over again; worse, they play it the same way. The end result is that preservationists have almost killed what they loved most. I have to fight an old image of the accordion that’s ingrained in the mind of my parents’ generation – not my parents, thank God! This middle generation sometimes looks down upon the instrument. Their parents and grandparents liked accordion, but by the end of the 1960s, what people sometimes call the “Golden Age of the Accordion” was dying quickly. Although, to be fair to the middle generation in this country, their disaffection wasn’t completely unjustified because of the advent of rock and roll. The silver lining, though, is that my generation did not have the chance to hate the accordion since it was already dead, and, to us, it’s a new thing almost.” Because of this “death,” blinders are removed for Cory’s generation. “I tend to do all of the genres,” he says. “I play French. I play Italian. Spanish. Jazz. Classical. Romanian. Klezmer. Funk stuff. Zydeco and Cajun music, and I love to try anything. One day, Dick Contino, a accordion legend, told me that I had what was needed to bring back the accordion. It’s quite a task. But my mission is to do it, or at least significantly contribute to doing this in this country. I owe this to Dick, to my other role models, my friend Eddie Monteiro, extraordinary players of the past such as Charles Magnante or of the present, such as Ionica Minune, who is able to play at supersonic speed innovatively for ten consecutive minutes, and of course to the man who was the first to play jazz on the accordion Art Van Damme. My musical education at NEC in Jazz has enabled me to look at the whole accordion world with a different perspective.” There, Cory is also very passionate when he speaks of his three main role models in Jazz, Arthur Tatum (1909 –1956), Sten Getz (1927 –1991), and Bill Evans (1929-1980). “Basically, when you get into the Jazz world, you learn all the tools you need to do most anything…”

A glimpse at Cory’s talents: you can navigate inside and through as well as zoom-in/out the pictures and videos – and also in full screen.

“…And the digital world helps it’s image to become cool as well.”
Like many accordionists, Cory owns several accordions. “We tend to collect a lot,” he says, “because each one has a different sound. My dad has become good at fixing them. One of my favorites used to belong to Charles Nunzio, one of the great pioneers of the instrument. He had studied with Pietro Frosini. It has a beautiful “wet” musette kind of sound – as opposed to a “dry” sound that is more for classical music. I love my Sonola, and, of course, my Roland. It’s a brand new innovation that came up a couple of years ago. A completely digital accordion. They have developed a new technology for the bellows, so it stays realistic for players. I can go back and forth from the acoustic to the Roland and it doesn’t affect my playing. The Roland has 800 accordion sounds on it. So you have anything you want. It’s MIDI capabilities open up limitless doors for any sound on the planet. But know that at Roland, they are not trying to take over the accordion world. They just want to give accordionists an accordion that they can do anything with, to sit next to the ones they already have. Guys in my age group love it and I can see that people of all generations relate very well to it. I am one of their US demonstrators so I currently travel around for them and participate in various trade-shows, and demonstrate the instrument to the accordion world. For example, I was at the NAMM fair in Annaheim.”

Hard work
In addition to practicing his accordion everyday, transcribing and arranging, Cory works like crazy. Taking care of business means building an audience, getting known by the people in the business of innovation who like music, by all sorts of players in the entertainment industry, the video game world – any world in fact. He plays everywhere, for an amazingly diverse audience, and he participates in a large number of festivals. He has recently recorded two CDs with George Garzone and his band “The Fringe”, and has been performing with them in the Boston and Providence region. He is an absolute fan of Formula 1 that he has watched since he was 2 years old. He is currently working on a Formula1 book/statistics that, he believes, will change the way people look upon the sports history and its champions – and his music is regularly played on Formula 1 broadcasts. And he has another hobby, also work-intensive. He is known to many as “The Snowman” for his meteorological work (he may be the only non-formally trained meteorologist TV guy in Rhode Island). His 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season compilation (http://www.weathermatrix.net/tropical/2005records.htm) has been used by virtually everybody. He likes applied statistics “almost” as much as Accordion.

Cory is kind, easy-going, charismatic and fun to be with. No wonder he has lots of fans… including Bill and Hillary Clinton: “I had won a National championship in my age group when I was 12. My uncle sent a tape to the White House because they had amateurs play at Christmas time; they saw the tape and they liked it. They called me to go in; my parents and I went down and I played in a hallway in the White House; my dad kept pushing to get me to play right near where Bill was and he ended up asking me to play for him privately during a break. We hit it off and we have been friends ever since basically. I went back three more times and I have played for him and Hillary on 10 different occasions since 1999 till now.”

Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

To know more:

About Cory Pesaturo – and his impressive achievements: http://www.corypesaturo.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Pesaturo

About some of the big names in accordion and jazz that I mention in this post: it is easy to find extensive information about all of them via Google. I also suggest that you listen to the videos posted on YouTube.

A Jew Among the Indians: this year’s BMOP’s winning composition: The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), a major orchestra dedicated exclusively to performing, commissioning, and recording new music, presented its 11th annual Boston ConNECtion concert on January 17th at Jordan Hall (Gil Rose, conductor) featuring works by William Thomas McKinley, Michael Gandolfi, Peter Maxwell Davies, John Heiss, Kati Agócs, and Matti Kovler’s Cokboy – A Jew Among the Indians. Right after she saw this final version of Matti’s piece, my daughter, Sophie Delphis, sent me an enthusiastic email, of which this is an abstract:  “I have seen Matti’s piece in a number of transformations this past year: with piano, with a small group of non-classical musicians, and now with an orchestra. In this third version, the wider palette of sounds available to him has apotheosized his vision. The reaction I hear from the majority of people about him, and specifically this piece, is their surprise at the broad range of sources that find themselves into his music. It is certainly not every young, contemporary composer who has the knowledge and the courage to explore both “schmaltzy” and abstract motives, and incorporate them so easily into the same piece. It is only fitting then, perhaps, for Matti to work with a large ensemble, wherein the breadth of soundscape can corroborate the breadth of his material. Cokboy is in many ways an epitome of Matti, the man: sensitive, Romantic, part mystical, part comical.”

Meet with Matti Kovler: Matti Kovler, 28, was born in the Soviet Union and
 spent his childhood in Moscow, where he started to play the piano and write small
 pieces. When he was 10, 
his family emigrated to Jerusalem and he encountered the Hungarian-born composer Andre
 Hajdu (who studied at the Paris Conservatoire National de Musique under Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen). By his late teens, Matti was already a successful composer and had an opera already staged, Ami and
 Tammy, inspired by the story of Hansel and Gretel. Following his army service in Israel, he received his
 bachelor’s degree from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (working with Menachem Wiesenberg and Michael Wolpe). He earned his master’s degree from the New England Conservatory (NEC), and is currently working towards his Ph.D., also at NEC.  His teachers and mentors in this country include John Heiss, Anthony Coleman, and Michael Gandolfi, to name a few. He was a 
Tanglewood Fellow in the composition program in Summer 2008.

Many high-tech entrepreneurs bootstrap their companies. Artists bootstrap their entire existence and live from their ability to express themselves – and can do this quite successfully. This is the case with Matti, who makes a living as the current director of the
 NEC Children’s Choirs, teaches privately piano and composition, receives scholarships and gets commissions for his compositions, the latest one being the commission of a large scale vocal orchestral work from Carnegie Hall for the Osvaldo Golijov and Dawn Upshaw Workshop (to be performed on May 9 &10). His goals? To work even more and be able to create a touring company one day.

Sophie Delphis & Marylene Delbourg-Delphis 

More about Matti Kovler:

http://www.myspace.com/mattikovler: This site offers an earlier version of A Jew Among the Indians as well as Shoresh Nishmat, performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall during a concert celebrating Israel’s
 60th anniversary, as well as his Clarinet Quintet. Upcoming performances include his
 string orchestra piece Nineveh, scheduled to premiere in Boston on
 January 31, 2009. 

http://www.mattikovler.com: More compositions are offered on this personal site, especially  Enosh, a rock opera, and the The Escape of Jonah, an oratorio that was performed at the
 Jerusalem Music Center in June 2008.

www.newenglandconservatory.edu/prep/ensembles/children_chorus.html

More about Jerome Rothenberg: Born in New York in 1931 from Polish-Jewish immigrants, Rothenberg is certainly one of the most prominent American poets, and an amazing translator and anthologist. He is the author over seventy books. For details see:

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/rothenberg/bio.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Rothenberg

Incidentally, for high-tech readers, he is the father of Matthew Rothenberg, who worked for Ziff Davis for a number of years and is now the Director for editorial and content at The Ladders (http://www.theladders.com).

More about Zoomorama: http://wla.zoomorama.com (Special thanks to Franklin Servan-Schreiber)