Musician finds harmony on unlikely instrument

By Linda GalokPrint Story | Email Story
Cathy Schane-Lydon with her most popular instrument. (Photo By Linda Galok)
“I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.” — Peter Ustinov (1921-2004) GREAT BARRINGTON — Irrepressible laughter lingered between every note in the tune of Cathy Schane-Lydon’s conversational tone. Lively humor harmonized the personality of this petite blonde musician who plays six instruments and “can’t remember a time that I couldn’t read or play music.” “What’s perfect pitch? The sound of the accordion hitting the bagpipes in the dumpster.” Schane-Lydon joked. “The funniest thing, though, is that of all the time and money I spent on piano lessons, it will probably be the accordion or the ukulele that makes me famous.” Mark Lydon, her husband, a former radio personality at WSBS, bought her a “big beast of an accordion” for her birthday 10 years ago and she taught herself to play. Lydon said her accordion playing has “taken her many interesting and unusual places in her life and opened doors that might have otherwise been closed.” She agreed. She recently sold her “beast,” a Gilletti accordion, and bought a more portable 24-pound Weltmeister for an upcoming trip to Africa. She carries her new accordion in a backpack because “all the cool accordion players use backpacks now.” She and several other musicians are going to Niger, a landlocked country bordered in the north by Libya and Nigeria in the south, in November. Project Troubadour is sponsoring the trip, but the musicians are responsible for raising the necessary traveling funds themselves. The portability of the accordion helped her become part of the trip because, Schane-Lydon said, “you can’t tote a piano around with you.” She has done a lot of traveling abroad but never to a country so vastly different from the United States. “This is a Muslim country,” she noted, “and there is a lot of anti-American sentiment in Muslim countries right now.” She said she is less worried about her safety than her mother is, however, because she believes she is “good at blending.” “I have a lot of respect for local customs. I will cover my head in public. I learned the words for please and thank you and I plan to smile – a lot,” she said. “The goal of the trip is to open our eyes to how different our cultures are but how similar when the root of everything can be music. Music can make a difference, and it can be the language that we can use to make something beautiful together in spite of the differences in our lives.” Alhough she didn’t profess to know exactly why accordion music is so underappreciated by the public, she did confirm, “In the beginning, it’s loud and obnoxious until you learn how to play it.” Once the accordion is learned, she said, “It’s a blast. It’s so emotional. You can play almost anything on an accordion, from heartbreaking Italian love songs to wonderful lighthearted polkas.” Schane-Lydon practices her accordion playing while she wanders from room to room in her house, with her dogs, Henry and Mary, padding along behind her. She said almost anyone can learn to play the accordion once they understand all the buttons. Schane-Lydon grew up in Canaan, N.Y., and has lived in the Berkshires since she got her bachelor’s degree in music composition at Simons Rock College in Great Barrington in 1984. Her mother, a classical pianist, taught her how to read music. Her father, a jazz reed man, taught her to play by ear. “He’d put a needle on a record and say ‘play that’.” He especially loved the Viennese waltzes. They listened to a Strauss concert every New Year’s Day, and her dad “achieved nirvana” when he heard her play old Strauss waltzes on the piano. Her younger brother, Fred Schane, whom she labeled a “brilliant, experimental musician,” works at The Music Store in Great Barrington. He has recently released a self-written, self-produced and self-performed CD, “Happy Now,” and will begin a nationwide promotional tour at the Armi of Great Barrington on July 30. In addition to piano and accordion, Schane-Lydon also sings and plays the ukulele, pipe organ, bass, flute and electric keyboard. She is a member of three musical groups – Mood Swing, the Ladies Auxiliary Ukulele Orchestra and Jovia. She plays for church services, gives private music lessons to people of all ages and has been a music teacher on staff at Springfield College for more than eight years. When Schane-Lydon studied musical composition with Alice Parker of Parker/Shaw at Westminster Choir College, she remembered Parker saying to her, “What is music? Music is not those little dots on the page. Music is what comes out of you.” “It’s such a simple concept,” Schane-Lydon said, “but it totally changed the way I thought about music. I used to think that I must play every note absolutely perfectly – and there’s room for that — but there has to be room for . ‘I’m going to express myself musically and who cares if I play a note that doesn’t sound quite right.’ The wonderful thing about music is that if you make a mistake you don’t fall to your death. That’s one reason I don’t teach rock climbing instead of music.” She said her biggest challenge has been teaching her music students that it is OK to make mistakes. “Amateur musicians just aren’t acceptable in our society anymore. Everything is perfect after it’s multi-tracked and tweaked. The mikes they use on stage correct {the voice} so that we never hear anyone sing off-key. But music is a huge joy. To be able to sit at a piano and have your family around you and everyone singing happy birthday or holiday music – that is ultimate happiness. Our society has taken the joy out of music by holding us to impossible standards of perfection. Today’s pop music is less about the music and more about aesthetics and marketing.” She added, “Music is really good at helping you understand that you’re not always going to be perfect yet you can still go on. She recalled playing the church organ for a wedding. Her back was to the church, but she had an overhead mirror to use for her cues. Her prompt to begin playing the wedding processional was when she saw the mother of the bride (who would be dressed in lavender) take her seat. Unfortunately, when the mother of the groom, who was also wearing lavender, took her seat, using the overhead mirror caused Schane-Lydon to reverse the bride and groom’s side. She played as many versions of “The Wedding March” as she could think of and couldn’t understand what was taking the bride so long. “But the real point of making music is just making music,” she maintained. “You can always keep getting better, and you can always be critiqued, but it’s not a critique about your own self.” She said music gave her the discipline and openness to be able to improve herself as a person. And she now has sticky notes for her mirror to label “brides’ side and grooms’ side” at weddings. She did wish that she had taken her musical talents a little more seriously and less for granted. She said she believed teachers who told her that her hands were too small to succeed as a musician. She doesn’t believe them anymore but lamented the time lost to the fallacy that she couldn’t do something she loved because she “wouldn’t be successful.” Schane-Lydon views her music and life with clarity: “Mistakes aren’t a big deal and music is a cooperative art,” she said. The last song she played to accompany Eileen Cozzaglio’s students at their recital compelled her to “listen to the music.” “From the tiniest students playing 8-inch violins to the big galumphing adults who used to be that small, we all played ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ for the final song because it was something everyone knew how to play,” she said. She described the experience as one of those universal moments of “pure musical harmony and joy” – just like laughter.
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Lanesborough Fifth-Graders Win Snowplow Name Contest

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — One of the snowplows for Highway District 1 has a new name: "The Blizzard Boss."
 
The name comes from teacher Gina Wagner's fifth-grade class at Lanesborough Elementary School. 
 
The state Department of Transportation announced the winners of the fourth annual "Name A Snowplow" contest on Monday. 
 
The department received entries from public elementary and middle school classrooms across the commonwealth to name the 12 MassDOT snowplows that will be in service during the 2025/2026 winter season. 
 
The purpose of the contest is to celebrate the snow and ice season and to recognize the hard work and dedication shown by public works employees and contractors during winter operations. 
 
"Thank you to all of the students who participated. Your creativity allows us to highlight to all, the importance of the work performed by our workforce," said  interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng.  
 
"Our workforce takes pride as they clear snow and ice, keeping our roads safe during adverse weather events for all that need to travel. ?To our contest winners and participants, know that you have added some fun to the serious take of operating plows. ?I'm proud of the skill and dedication from our crews and thank the public of the shared responsibility to slow down, give plows space and put safety first every time there is a winter weather event."
 
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