Ispilu: Works for Quarter-Tone Accordion

Lore Larrañaga designed and commissioned a totally new instrument to explore how the accordion could express microtonal music and this is the first ever recording of this whole genre.

A gratifyingly inventive listening experience, Ispilu marks the first recording of Basque accordionist Lore Amenabar Larrañaga’s self-designed quarter-tone accordion, custom built by Bugari Armando. Lore has engaged in a detailed investigation of her custom quarter-tone accordion, exploring its technical and sonic boundaries through the commissioning of a new body of collaborative works, written between 2020 and 2022, during her PhD studies at the Royal Academy of Music.

Lore explains:
“The design of my instrument allows the production of quarter tones in both the right and left-hand manuals. The range and timbral possibilities of this instrument are expanded through the use of fifteen registers on the right manual and seven on the left manual, resulting in a sounding range of E-2 to B-quarter-sharp-6 in the right hand and E-1 to Dquarter-sharp-6 in the left. From Electra Perivolaris to Christopher Fox, Michael Finnissy to Mioko Yokoyama, this album will accommodate diverse textures, voices, and ideas; all gravitating around the Quarter-Tone Accordion”