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by Rob Howard
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Review by Robert Michael Oliver, DC Metro Arts Dorado Schmitt and the Django Festival All-Stars last week performed at The Kennedy Center, featuring the accordion/violin duo Ludovic Beier and Pierre Blanchard. With Dorado Schmitt on lead guitar the show began with Schmitt’s composition ‘Miro Django’. He was accompanied by Doudou Cuillerier on rhythm guitar and Xavier Nikq on bass, and immediately a gypsy soul filled the auditorium. Soon Ludovic Beier and Pierre Blanchard came on stage, and when they did words took a holiday. Ludovic Beier’s accordion created sounds that reinvent the instrument. During one of his original compositions, ‘Sad and Beautiful’, he played the accordina, a small hybrid of an instrument somewhere between the accordion and the harmonica, and the piece’s title could not be more appropriate. The sheer delight of the 80 minutes this concert lasted won’t fade easily with time. For an encore these six fabulous musicians from France gave the audience a moment of silence, remembering the horrors of the terrorist attacks in Paris. |