Today is the Winter Solstice, which is the perfect excuse to share this video of Lithuanian accordion virtuoso Martynas Levickis playing a wonderful transcription of the first movement of Vivaldi’s Winter…

Among other things, this is a great example of using the bellows shake in a tasteful and musical way.

I had always written off that technique as a bit of an old-fashioned gimmick, a la Lady of Spain. But Martynas’ performance has really inspired me to go back to working on bellows shakes myself.

And winter is the perfect time to hit the woodshed!