‘The Accordion Player’ author to speak at Chaucer’s Books

By MARILYN MCMAHON NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

Dr. Ichak Adizes, author of “The Accordion Player,” will discuss his memoir at 6 p.m. Feb. 27 at Chaucer’s Books, 3321 State St. in Loreto Plaza.

Seeing every challenge as an opportunity for growth, Dr. Adizes moved beyond a childhood marked by imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and immigration to an unfamiliar country to discover the benefits of opening his heart.

Rejecting isolation and fear, he became a renowned thought leader who advises companies and governments worldwide on structuring thriving organizations around a culture of trust and respect.

Dr. Adizes’s personal story is more than a string of external events that propelled him through adversity after adversity to become the insightful, compassionate person he is today.

It is also a map of his journey

Ted Nash

Continued from Page B1 be perceived as some type of transformation.

“Being creative is transforming our experiences, thoughts and feelings into an expression,” he said. “In music, we can take a few notes (there are 12) and transform them into symphonies. The transformations that I embraced for these concerts include taking classical music themes (Scriabin, Mozart) and turning them into completely new pieces.”

Mr. Nash added that he just returned from Cuba on his latest project, in which he worked with high school students to compose music inspired by paintings.

“It was an intense five-day workshop that culminated in a concert performing 15 new compositions. Many of the young musicians had never composed music before. The whole week was recorded and will be into a heart which, like the accordion that he played to earn a living and put himself through school, ultimately expanded and opened up to the universal released as a documentary.” email: dmason@newspress.com

Fyi

The Santa Barbara Symphony will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at The Granada, 1214 State St. Performers include saxophonist Ted Nash, the Josh Nelson Trio and the symphony’s principal pianist, Natasha Kislenko. The works are the world premiere of Mr. Nash’s extensive orchestrations of “Transformation for Symphony Orchestra and Narrator,” Ravel’s “Bolero,” Richard Strauss’“Death and Transfiguration” and Ernest Von Dohnanyi’s Variations on a Nursery Song, Opus 25. Sunday’s performance will be preceded with a pre-concert talking featuring Mr. Nash and Nir Kabaretti, the symphony’s music and artistic director, at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $35 to $175. To purchase, go to granadasb.org.

truths that connect us all in our humanity.

“The Accordion Player” is a compelling account of a remarkable life, an unvarnished