Daniel Hersh

If you enjoy World Concertina Day, consider joining the International Concertina Association, which organizes it! ICA membership goes with the calendar year, so joining now will cover your membership dues/subscription through the end of 2025. Members receive the quarterly Concertina World magazine and its music supplement, which will be mailed to you in paper or PDF form depending on your preference. You'll also have access to the members-only portions of the ICA website as well as the ICA library of concertina music. Most important, you'll be a part of the only international concertina organization, still going strong more than 70 years after our founding! In addition to World Concertina Day (including our concertina Zoom gatherings and international video concerts) you'll be supporting our other initiatives like Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne's concertinas in schools project. To join or re-join or renew (if you're a member who has not yet renewed for 2025) just fill out and submit the form at https://concertina.org/membership . For more information about ICA, look around our website at https://concertina.org . Members who join or renew now and choose to receive Concertina World in paper will receive all the issues for 2025. That won't be the case if you wait much longer.

Ken, it looks like you were right and I was wrong. When I look again, those links (which do work for me in both Chrome and Firefox on Windows 11 - perhaps you're using a pop-up blocker?) show the Richard Carlin CD. I manually constructed the right equivalent links for English International (for example https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001IXVNWW?aod=1&ie=UTF8&condition=new ) and I then see "No featured offers available" for both new and used. And when I changed my "Deliver to" to a UK postal code, it still shows as unavailable.

I'm in the US too, but I found this and the link works for me. I can't see your screen, of course. If you're getting to a screen that looks like the one below, click "Audio CD" right under the stars, just above "Currently unavailable", and it should take you to the right place. But if you click the other "Audio CD" that's farther down the screen (just above "£15.51") you will indeed get the Richard Carlin recording.

English International is available via Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/English-International-History-Concertina/dp/B001IXVNWW , then click the New or Used links under Audio CD. The John Nixon CDs may be harder to find - I don't think many were printed. I have them somewhere...

A report on this event by Lee Knight in Australia is at https://concertina.org/concertina-zoom-gathering-for-world-concertina-day-2025 . Screenshots are included! We're hoping to do another one this fall.

I agree.

Yes, on the ICA website soon, and I think at some point in Concertina World too. I'll try to remember to post another note here once they're on the website.

I'm glad you enjoyed it - I did too! We plan to do another one in the fall.

Hi Gary! We don't record them because that would make playing at these even more intimidating than it already is. As it was, we had over 40 people there and only 16 played (including Randy and me).

Today is World Concertina Day, sponsored by the International Concertina Association. Our 2025 international video concert is now available for viewing and listening. Part one: Rachel Mahony, Vincent Powell, Juliet Woodin & Janet Thomas, Jutta Tigges, Steve Wilson, Takayuki Yagi, Niki Fliri & Nina Dietrich, Dave Ball, Doug Watt, and Rosewood Part two: Millicent & Tristan White, Gaylen Haas, Tim Collins, Dick & Sabina Glasgow, Willie Botha, Matt Heumann, Luke Vincent, Rick Epping, Jim Besser, and Gary Coover

I would suggest you email Concertina Connection to ask about this.

Coming up soon, with events starting in less than two weeks! We now have ten events around the world listed on the WCD 2025 page, plus the free worldwide Zoom gathering (registration is still open!) More info below.

Updated to show that the Concertina Connection Rochelle 2 is now out of production.

After seeing things in various places speculating on the status of Concertina Connection/Wakker Concertinas, I emailed the owner William "Wim" Wakker and got the following info, which I thought was interesting enough to share here (with his permission). He wrote: "We're still active, and by far the largest concertina manufacturer worldwide. We just past 17,000 instruments that we designed, built, and sold either directly to customers, or through one of our dealers in the US, Europe, and UK. We build 34 different concertina models in all 3 layouts: English, Duet (Wicki/Hayden, and other systems), and anglos. We build hybrid concertinas ranging in price from $469 to $3800, traditional Wakker concertina models ranging from $7000-10,000, and our Parnassus models, starting around $10,000, and $38,000 for a consort. Our current lead times: Entry level models (Jackie/Jack, Elise, Rochelle): always in stock, either directly from us or from our dealers. Intermediate models (Minstrel, Busker, Troubadour, Clover, Peacock, Rose): current lead time around 15 weeks. Wakker standard models: the current lead time is 5+ years. Because of this, we TEMPORARILY closed our order book until we're back to our normal 4 year waiting list. We hope to be able to open our order book again later this year (2025). Parnassus models: Because of the complexity of these instruments and the long build time, we use a different 'slot' based system. The current lead time for a Parnassus model is around 2 years. (...) Based on the market, anglos are between 25-35% of all the instruments we build/sell. (...) For us our biggest challenge is still trying to keep up with demand. If we would not have TEMPORARILY closed our order book for the standard Wakker models, our waiting time would have past the 6 years easily."