A Tribute That Puts the Squeeze On: Concert Will Celebrate the Life and Work of Accordion Guru Walter Kuehr By STEVE DOLLAR Feb. 13, 2015 6:29 p.m. ET Walter Kuehr is gone, but his dream lives on. The colorful musician and entrepreneur, who owned the Main Squeeze accordion shop on[…]
NPR Weekend Edition Saturday JON KALISH Walter Kuehr made his own name by making a name for what he called “the hippest instrument on the planet”: the accordion. He died earlier this month at age 59. SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Walter Kuehr was known as the accordion guru of Manhattan’s Lower[…]
By MARGALIT FOX “A gentleman,” a widely repeated anonymous quotation has it, “is a man who can play the accordion but doesn’t.” By those lights, Walter Kühr was unequivocally no gentleman. Mr. Kühr, who died in Manhattan on Jan. 2, at 59, was for decades an evangelist of the instrument, as[…]
Main Squeeze Orchestra at the Bowery Poetry Club By Marty If you missed our, ahem, SOLD OUT Russian Classical Music Show, you can vicariously experience it through this lovely write-up by picture-happy Marty of blog world fame. Stay tuned for a repeat performance … http://www.trippingwithmarty.com/almost-live-from-new-york-city/2012/5/7/main-squeeze-orchestra-at-the-bowery-poetry-club.html Spaciba!
Big Squeeze By Ezra Glinter http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/04/24/big-squeeze/ April 24, 2012 On a recent Tuesday afternoon I was sitting with Walter Kuehr in the back room of Main Squeeze Accordions on Essex Street, asking questions about the accordion business. He said he mostly does repairs these days, and he conducts the Main[…]
Squeeze This!: A Cultural History of the Accordion in America By Marion Jacobson University of Illinois Press 2012 Main Squeeze Orchestra and Walter figure prominently in this book, beginning with the very introduction and the birth of the accordion universe as we know it: Like many who started[…]
Valentine’s Day World News Now Polka ABC’s Barry Mitchell featured members of The Main Squeeze Orchestra in a very special polka on ABC World News Now. (View the clip here.) The extravaganza was also picked up by TVNewser‘s “The Ticker.”
Go Ahead, Obsess! By Eric Maisel, Ph.D., Ann Maisel, and Carlin Flora http://www.psychologytoday.com Walter Kühr: Conducting a Dream When his mother bought him an accordion in the suburbs of Frankfurt, Germany, 12-year-old Walter Kühr fell in love with the unwieldy jumble of shiny buttons and keys. He came to the[…]
Squeeze Play: Accordion Orchestra Takes on Bach, Queen By Larry Getlen May 13, 2007 — It may give one pause to hear a middle-age man recall a dream in which 18 young women cavort around in pigtails. But the subconscious mind of Walter Kuehr added an element that transformed it[…]
2005 Best of NYC Listing The Main Squeeze Orchestra is a New York City-based, dozen-plus, all-girl accordion troupe that overflows the scales of feminine virtue in the name of song. More sugar cube than vegan icing, they do cabaret and camp along with all the bellows’ best, while dressed, coiffed,[…]
Let’s Lay to Rest Accordion Geekiness My friends, it is time to unburden yourselves of your secret. The one you’ve been harboring for years, hot-faced with shame. Admit it: You love the accordion. Oh how its chords stab straight to your heart! How it makes you pine for the old[…]
A Squeeze Box Philharmonic By Kelly Alexander WALTER KUHR is a man who followed his dream, literally. In March 2002, Mr. Kuhr, a native of Frankfurt who is an accomplished accordion player and the founder of the Main Squeeze, an 8-year-old accordion emporium on the Lower East Side of Manhattan,[…]
Touted as the only all-female accordion ensemble in the Western world, the 18 members… wear their hair in pigtails. The orchestra is the fantasy-made-reality of local accordion impresario and conductor Walter Keuhr. The MSO plays pieces by Schubert, the Beatles and The Kinks, among others. You gotta raise an eyebrow[…]
The Orchestra is made up of 16 women. So far, so good. And they all play the accordion. Does it get any more exciting than this?