BAND DISAPPEARS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 103, 12 February 1936, Page 8

BAND DISAPPEARS.

LONDON ACCORDION CONTESTS. Two bundled accordion players of mixed ago and sex, accompanied by a crowd of three hundred relations, friends, dance band leaders in search of talent and people who just like the sound of accordions, mot at the Central Hall, Westminster, for the first National Amateur Accordion Champion Contest, writes Betty Riddell in the “Daily Mail,” London. Competitors came from all over England. They were to have come from all over Scotland as well, but it was discovered that the Scottish accordion makes two noises to every single noise of the English version, a fact which might have caused considerable confusion. So the Scots did not compete. Forty soloist competitors played either “Pilgrim’s March” from “Tannhauser” or Dvorak’s “Humoreske” —the Russian winning from the German by a short head in the race for popularity. The Central Hall is full of traps for the unwary, and at one time a whole accordion band, complete with accordions and uniforms had been swallowed up in the mysterious alleys at the back of the stage. But the show must go on, and Lorna Martin, aged 13, stepped on to the stage with her mar-oon-varnished accofdion and saved the day. Lorna comes from Kilburn and was the youngest woman competitor at the hall. No one jn her family ever played the accordion before. But Lorna liked music, and her father liked the sound of the accordion. Eighteen months ago Lorna took her first lesson. At the contest she got perhaps the biggest hand of all. Back in the dressing room she said she had been very nervous.