Cory Pesaturo wants to change the way we think about the accordion, musicianship and excellence. He advocates the accordion as the greatest instrument ever made. At the same time, he readily accepts its perception in popular culture. “Stereotypes are true,” he says, “My job is to change the stereotype.”
Pesaturo champions unapologetic meritocracy and direct truths. “I say a lot of things that, to me, are obvious,” he says, “We’ve become such a soft culture where the pendulum has now swung to the point that people are starting to look for opinions like mine.” He thinks in statistics, be it music, sports, or snowfall. “I see everything in terms of data. Music, and art in general, are portrayed as extremely subjective things, but they aren’t. Go to any top jazz concert and I can guarantee you that everyone on the stage is of the very best at what they do. If you really analyze everything across music history, music is pretty objective. Obviously, there is more nuance—and it’s certainly more subjective than sports—but not by the large gap people make it seem like.”
This competitive spirit led Pesaturo, eventually, to music. “I was always very much into sports, because it’s a pure meritocracy,” he says, “But I sucked at sports, my parents used to yell at the coach to take me out … haha.” Happy to please his Italian-American parents, Pesaturo tried the accordion. It took. “I was progressing quicker than everyone around me. So I thought, this is how I can win, I can win at music. And that was my motivation. I enjoy playing music, but I love the competitive spirit of it.”
By 15, he was a National Champion. He later became, and remains, the only person to win world titles in Acoustic, Digital, and Jazz accordion. At 16, he became the youngest American accordionist to solo with a symphony orchestra. In 2017 he broke the Guinness World Record for longest continuing accordion playing, over 32 hours. He is the first accordion player to graduate from the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. At age 12, he was the youngest performer at a State Dinner at the White House.
Even with the mindset of a champion, his competition wins were not inevitable. Pesaturo had a natural ability with improvisation and musicality, skill sets that do not necessarily translate to the competition stage. “I hated that competitions were about who made the least amount of mistakes,” he says, “There’s a lot more to music than that. If you added your own musicality, the judges would mark you for it, and only wanted you to play everything exactly as the music presented. And I hated that. I had to win competitions without my strengths. Which of course helps you in other ways down the road.”
Pesaturo has made his name primarily as a jazz player, where improvisation and taste are vital. Jazz came into his life as a liberator. He played clarinet in his middle school and high school band, and his teacher was a renowned jazz clarinetist in New England, Joe Pompi. “If I had a good lesson and did what I was supposed to do, then he would take out the Real Book and we would play a song, and I would be allowed to improvise,” he says, “That was my prize. So I played jazz tunes and improvised in a jazz way on clarinet before accordion. I know—Shocker!”
Pesaturo gigs and travels constantly. “My dad always taught me that you can’t hit a moving target,” he says. While he proudly brandishes an earned elitism as to musicianship, when it comes to gigging Pesaturo is pure populist. He plays everything, anywhere: house parties, Italian festivals, theaters, game shows, late night talk shows, even the White House.
“Musicians always seem to forget, it’s not their job to sit there and listen to some crap you came up with, or music you think is cool,” he says, “It’s your job to entertain them. Know all kinds of music and be prepared to entertain everyone, regardless of how good or not good you are.”
His favorite gigs are the small private parties, where he can witness to skeptics about the excellence of the electric accordion. “I like the intimate ones because you can really make connections,” he says, “The stereotype is that accordion players are old people who sit down and play boring music. People realize they can ask me to play almost anything. I can even be the DJ. There’s no tracks, every note is coming from my fingers. That’s more fun. It’s real.”
Pesaturo gives lectures on musicianship and mindset. In his TEDx Talk, The Mind of a Musician, he articulates three columns of musical excellence: physical technique; an intellectual understanding of theory, putting what you’re hearing into mathematics; and the ear for your inner creativity. These factors not only help assess greatness, but they are essential foundations for a musician who wants to play with better musicians, which is the ethos of jazz, and the only true way for any musician to improve.
“The whole reason I was accepted in the jazz world was because they didn’t give a crap that I played accordion,” he says, “When I would go to a jam session, they might look at me with this very discriminatory look, but at the end of the day they didn’t care, and I certainly didn’t care. I just said, ‘yeah, let’s play.’ And once I could play, it didn’t matter that I played accordion. All that matters is, can you play or can you not play.”
Matt Powell is a writer and musician. His work explores the interconnectivity of all music and the people who create or listen. His writing has been featured in several publications, including Variety, No Depression, Emmys.com, and Angels Flight—Literary West. Learn more at www.theemattpowell.com