-from our listeners-

I just heard you on the Berkeley Public Channel and you all are great. I am guessing you have arranged the already existing tunes and composed and arranged the others. Your compositions are wonderful as is your accordion playing. Your group has a serious mien, without the usual mugging and pandering, and I congratulate you. I listened to everything with intense concentration, thoroughly enjoying the wonderful sound of the organ-like keyboard and bellows instrument with the rich, flexible strings and wanted more than anything to be the fourth player in this ensemble, playing counter melodies with my cello, both pairing up with and playing against the beautiful violin lines and adding a bit of richness to the already big, sonorous, and in-tune chords your ensemble produces.

a sublime and nuanced hip acoustic band.

West Coast Live

 

There's little to say, except that I think you are a genius. If anyone ever tells you otherwise, don't listen. Just keep making your wonderful music!

Your CD, A Streetcar Too Far, is my favorite. I have frequent brain MRIs and yours is the CD that I take for them to play for me. I spend the time in the machine visualizing the contour of the tunes. They are truly incredible. You are a master. I would like to get the sheet music of the tunes if any are available. Can you please let me know what you have for sale?

My cubicle is drab, but with headphones and "A Streetcar Too Far" filling my head I am transported to a better place: the image is hazy... perhaps a table at a European cafe, sidewalk musicians playing with sophisticated and somewhat restrained passion, the coffee strong and delicious and spiked to take the jittery edge off the caffeine and the afternoon, aromas of food from the kitchen swirling and mingling with the smell of the burros passing in the street, my heart filled with melancholy for the past and the sweet romance of the present, our fingers entwined...

I was lucky enough to remember to attend Kimric Smythe's 2nd annual accordion festival last night. Rick Corrigan's "Pickpocket Ensemble" was there and were fantastic. Their music is indeed worth going to hear... with very talented musicians on stand up bass, guitar and violin, and Rick on his Excelsior AC, it was indeed a pleasure to attend and to listen.

I enjoyed your music from "A Streetcar Too Far" last night. It's really brilliant and meaningful and heartwarming. I miss the old world I never knew where orange lights and slow conversation take place.

On the second outing of San Francisco's own pickPocket ensemble the repertoire is much the same: exceedingly well written and executed Eastern European flavored instrumentals, with maybe a tad more klezmer spicing this time round.

A band that is hard to encompass in standard music phraseology. Corrigan is a talented composer and exacting performer and his band's dreamlike sound has been described as "cafe music without borders." It can't be characterized as folk music, yet people of many different ethnic backgrounds ... hear the music of their homeland when they hear the pickPocket ensemble. The ever-evolving Corrigan is connected to a universal musical fount.

Boaz Rubin
Boaz Accordion Pages

 

If you want to hear blues there are plenty of places to hear blues there is no lack of support there, I know, but not if you want to hear the likes of Pauline O, or the pickpocket ensemble, or the Togs, or Jane Rigler (who by the way is one hell of a flute player). This 'scene' is not about fucking pop-culture programmed robots playing trends. I see alot of complaining about a lack of things not happening when in fact they do happen. I think the one solution is...get out more and look at email less!