the Korg fisa Suprema
One of the most extraordinary musical instruments you’ve ever heard
“A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn’t,” Tom Waits has said. Or maybe Mark Twain. Or maybe Noël Coward. There can’t be too many quotes attributed to such an incongruous triumvirate, but then there are few instruments as polarizing as the squeeze-box.
Whatever, I hope it’s not too much of a shock for readers to know that these columns are produced in an accordion-filled home. The two in-house accordions—lately three, for reasons I will come to—are nothing to do with me. No, the accordionist is my art-historian partner, Sarah Jane Checkland, who has been playing for 25 years. And I have to admit, I do like hearing the sounds of Paris, Palermo, New Orleans, and so on wheezing in from the sitting room.
