David Akin emailed me about this earlier today: yesterday in St. John’s, Newfoundland, almost 1,000 people gathered to play accordion simultaneously, breaking the previous world record of 644, set in Kimberley, British Columbia.
To qualify for the world record, you can’t just have a large number of accordion players gathered in one spot: according to this page
on the St. John’s Folk Festival site, they have to all play the same
orchestrated piece for a minimum of five minutes. The designated piece
is an old Newfoundland folk tune called Mussels in the Corner.
A number of the people in attendance were accordion owners but not
accordion players — many learned how to play the piece just days or
hours before the event.
Congratulations, folks! I would’ve loved to have been there.
[Thanks to David Akin for emailing me about this story!]