Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Zydekats on PBS Holiday Celebration


The PBS Los Angeles Holiday Celebration special aired tonight. This program features the best hour of acts from the previous year's event. The production of the L.A. County Arts Commission actually lasts for six hours! I have to say that this is the most interesting holiday program I've seen yet this year.



The range and quality of the acts was spectacular. If you like traditional children's choirs there was one. If you wanted Gospel, it was there. On the other extreme was a ballet dancer who used two fabric banners suspended from the stage rigging as props for a dance routine, or a new interpretation of a portion of the Nutcracker that combined ballet and break dancing.

But the very first act was the Zydekats, led by Lisa Haley, who perform traditional and contemporary Americana/Cajun/Zydeco arrangements. Lisa sings and plays violin, but an accordion is strongly featured in the backup band. This picture was taken off my TV screen, but if you follow the link below you can see a short video about them at PBS.

The accordionist is playing a 72-bass piano accordion.

See a video of the Zydecatz at about the middle of the page.

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