Roland U.S.

Cory Pesaturo

A Young Virtuoso Takes the World Championship with the V-Accordion®

At 23, accordion wizard and Roland artist Cory Pesaturo has already enjoyed a career full of achievements that would make any musician proud. He’s won numerous U.S. and international accordion championships and performed to receptive audiences all over the world, including four appearances at the White House, the first at age 12. As a graduate of the esteemed New England Conservatory of Music, he was the first musician in the institution’s long history to major in the accordion. His discography includes two solo jazz CDs, backed up by sax legend George Garzone and his band The Fringe.

In August 2009, Cory added “world champion” to his already impressive resume with a win in the Digital Accordion category at the Coupe Mondiale World Accordion Championships. The annual event, hosted by a different country each year, is the most prestigious of all accordion competitions, attracting the finest accordionists from around the globe to compete and perform.

At this season’s event in Auckland, New Zealand, Cory took top honors playing the Roland FR-7 V-Accordion. This was the inaugural year for the Digital Accordion category at Coupe Mondiale, and its inclusion is a testament to the growing popularity of Roland’s V-Accordion technology among the international accordion community.

Cory became a part of the Roland V-Accordion demonstration team in 2008, a position he pursued after acquiring his own FR-7 V-Accordion in early 2007. After playing a traditional acoustic accordion for so long, he quickly adopted the FR-7 as his main instrument. “The greatest thing about it is that when you’re playing accordion voices, there’s hardly any difference [between the V-Accordion and an acoustic accordion],” he says. “It’s a real accordion, but with all kinds of gadgets and candy inside to have fun with! That’s what’s great about it.”

The V-Accordion’s versatility is one of its biggest attributes, and Cory makes full use of its many onboard non-accordion voices. “For playing jazz, I love the organ and the acoustic bass, they’re so realistic,” he says. “I love the fretless bass, too. The piano is just incredible, and the flute’s great as well.”

Having access to such a wide variety of sounds greatly adds to his range of expression in live performances, and even allows him to do double duty when a bass player isn’t available. “So many of the gigs I do are solo or duo gigs,” he relates. “For those gigs, I want a bass player, and I want that bass player to be part of my body, so I bring the V-Accordion.”

Cory also loves the fact that V-Accordions are so consistent from instrument to instrument. When he travels, he simply plays an FR-7 provided for him at his destination, eliminating the hassles of flying with an instrument. “I’ve tried to become a great stock accordion player, where I can pick up any V-Accordion and go,” he says. This confidence stretches to even the most important events, including his recent performances at Coupe Mondiale. “For the World Championships, I just played the FR-7 that was there,” he says. “I’ve worked my whole program up so it can be done on a stock FR-7 out of the box.”

One of Cory’s primary career goals is to help the accordion become a more mainstream musical instrument. He credits the V-Accordion as a key to achieving this aim, likening its role to the way the invention of the electric guitar led to an explosion in the popularity of guitar music. Additionally, Cory hopes more and more traditional accordion players will embrace the V-Accordion as a new and innovative instrument that extends the range of the accordion genre, instead of viewing it as a replacement for the acoustic accordion itself. “To be modern, and to save the accordion for the accordion’s sake, the purists have to accept this V-Accordion,” he says. “The V-Accordion is so cool. With Roland’s help, I believe the accordion will see a renaissance with a new generation of musicians.”