By Pamela Young

Joseph Macerollo remembers when playing the accordion was something he did behind closed doors. In the early 1960s, when he studied piano and later musicology at the University of Toronto, he used to sneak his squeezebox into the Faculty of Music practice studios. "I would block the window so nobody could see in Macerollo recalls. "And I only practiced on Friday nights, because that was the one night I could be assured that the whole floor would be empty and I could escape undetected." 

Although he is outgoing and open-hearted by nature, Macerollo had good reason to be secretive about his Friday-night forays. Thirty years ago, musicians who wanted to be taken seriously couldn't go anywhere near an accordion; the instrument was thought suitable only for folk songs, polkas, and razzle-dazzle renditions of "Lady of Spain." 

But Macerollo eventually got fed up with hiding out in the practice studio, and over the past few decades has done more than any other Canadian to enhance the accordion's reputation. 

Most recently, the Mississauga resident has organized the International Accordion Celebration, which takes place in Toronto March 26-April 4. The festivities include the March 31 premiere of R. Murray Schafer's Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra, featuring Macerollo with The Toronto Symphony, which commissioned the work.

Macerollo says his ultimate goal is to win acceptance for the accordion on the concert stage "in a very serious way." He concedes that he still has a long way to go, but he regards the International Accordion Celebration as a major step in the right direction. The event - the first of its kind ever staged on this scale - will display the talents of many of the world's finest classically trained accordionists, including Denmark's Mogens Ellegaard and Germany's Hugo Noth. Canadian artists and ensembles, including soprano Mary Lou Fallis, harpist Erica Goodman, the Esprit Orchestra and the Pro Arte Orchestra,. will also take part. Another facet of the celebration, a competition for young accordionists, has attracted entrants from across North America and Europe. 

Just as a honky-tonk upright piano lacks the refinement of a concert grand, the sort of accordion associated with Lawrence Welk's TV show is an unsophisticated affair in comparison to the "free bass" accordions the festival participants will be playing. The buttons on the left-hand side of a standard accordion are arranged in perfect fifths and each produces a fixed chord. But on a free bass accordion, chromatically arranged buttons sound individual notes up to a range of six-and-a-half octaves. 

"It was only with the introduction of the classical accordion, which liberated the left hand, that we could get serious music written for us," says Macerollo. 
Schafer, who is well known for his string quartets, orchestral commissions and his Patria cycle of music theatre works, describes the free bass accordion as a remarkably expressive instrument. 

"It has a pianissimo which is as subtle as any pianissimo on a violin or a clarinet," says the composer, who lives in Indian River, Ont. "And it has great dynamic range - sudden lunging fortissimos - and great percussive possibilities of attack." 

Macerollo started out on a standard model and later learned the free bass instrument. Raised in Guelph, he began taking lessons at the age of 6, and within a few years he was performing at 
local weddings and political rallies. By the time he finished high school, he knew that he wanted a musical career, but there was nowhere to go for advanced accordion studies. It was not until 1969 that the Royal Conservatory of Music established an accordion programme - at Macerollo's urging. He subsequently pioneered the acceptance of free bass accordion at the music faculty of Queen's University in Kingston in 1970 and at the University of Toronto two years later. 

In the early 1970s, Schafer heard Macerollo in concert and began meeting with him to learn more about his instrument. Then, in 1977, Macerollo and soprano Mary Morrison premiered Schafer's La Testa d'Adriane, a carnival- tinged music theatre piece in which the singer plays the part of a live severed head resting on a table. Schafer has since written accordion parts into two of his Patria works for Macerollo and has dedicated his new concerto to him. 
"Maybe I'm a bit of an oddball and he saw me as a person with a mission, someone who didn't have a hope in hell of succeeding," the accordionist speculates. 

Macerollo points out that the work he will be premiering with The Toronto Symphony reflects Schafer's thorough understanding of the accordion. "Murray has scored the accordion part so that it represents its two most salient qualities--its lyricism and its bravura quality," he says. "The concerto is in three movements. The first movement sets you up with some rather interesting and difficult technical challenges that are modified by the lyrical second movement and them hammered out in a very, very tough, rhythmic third movement."

In some ways, the concerto's orchestra scoring is unusual. Schafer decided to feature some of the denizens of the symphonic cellar, including the contrabassoon, the bass clarinet and the bass trombone. "It gives the orchestra a rather deep, sombre colour," says the composer. With a laugh, he adds that Maestro Gunther Herbig has likened the concerto's sound in places to "a puddle of black oil." Audiences can also expect some interesting percussion work performed on objects more often found in kitchens than in concert halls. 

For Macerollo, who is president of New Music Concerts in Toronto and teaches accordion at Queen's University and the University of Toronto, the Inter- national Accordion Celebration is a new beginning rather than a culmination. He and other members of the International Accordion Society plan to stage similar events in Amsterdam in 1995 and in Helsinki in 1997. 

Macerollo acknowledges that winning acceptance for his instrument has been "a long, hard road in terms of sell." But many who have worked with him have come to respect both the man and his mission. "There's an awful lot of challenge, a lot of determination in the work I've written for him," says Schafer "He's someone who wants to confront bigger musical problems." 
Nearly 30 years ago, Joe Macerollo worked up the nerve to champion the accordion as a serious musical instrument. He has never regretted the decision.