If you are any sort of insular, bookwormy child who happens to play the accordion, the desire for connection is strong. That’s but a partial reason as to why I was so drawn to the magnetic work of pianist-accordionist Ben Rosenblum.
Yes, he has been making rich, globally genre-jumbled jazz with his Nebula Project for the last several years on albums and lengthy tours. But when Rosenblum titled his 2026 release The Longest Way Round (One Trick Dog Records, out February 27), a quote from James Joyce’s Ulysses, without making his music equitably impenetrable, I knew that he and I had to speak.
The following exchange was edited for length and clarity.
I played accordion throughout the largest part of my sickly, chubby youth, age roughly four to nine. Would you say that you are or might be a glutton for punishment?
That’s funny. Well, I started on piano when I was very young and picked up the accordion later on — first messing around with it probably a little before high school, and getting much more serious about performing on it when I was in college.
It’s definitely a really hard instrument to coordinate at first — as a pianist I thought that the transition would be easier, but it took so much longer than I thought it would to become comfortable on the instrument. And unlike the piano, when you don’t have a touch on the accordion yet, even one note that’s out of place sounds so unflattering.
But I loved the sound of the instrument, so I stuck with it. I started performing on it regularly around ten years ago. And then with the break from performing due to the pandemic, I had a little bit of a chance to reset and start fresh with the basic technique of the instrument, and from then on it really felt like I could express more of what I wanted.
Do you have any stories you’ve tried to bury about it? Did you have to play “Lady of Spain”?
I first heard the accordion played by Gary Versace in the Maria Schneider Orchestra. In the context of her music, the accordion is eally used more for melodic interjections and timbral/textural effect, so I fell in love just with the sound of the instrument before I knew anything about the accordion tradition, or any of the music people typically associate with the accordion in the United States.
After that, when my brother purchased my first accordion for me as a gift, I took some lessons with an accordionist in New York named Vitor Gonçalves, an incredible musician who is originally from Brazil, and he gave me some Brazilian choro and forró to learn. In this regard, I had a very different first experience with the instrument and developed a different relationship to it.
For me, what is magical about the accordion is its tone, its vocal-like qualities and its sensitivity, probably all elements that some people might not associate with the instrument. I never played “Lady of Spain,” and I’ve never played any polka, though at this point I do have some experience with other stereotypically “accordion” musics, like klezmer, musette and even playing the Godfather soundtrack with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
As a jazz player, were you ever into Art Van Damme, or seeking jazz influences for the accordion? As a kid, my dad, a jazz saxophonist, gave me a handful of AVD records, and my dad’s keyboardist was hugely enthusiastic about Van Damme. And my aunt was in love-lost with Myron Floren from Lawrence Welk’s orchestra.
My love of jazz started from a young age with the piano. I was never very responsible about practicing the classical music I was supposed to, but I loved just sitting down at the piano and freely improvising. My mom is a big jazz fan, and she suggested to me that I learn jazz, and from then on, I was completely hooked.
Jazz gave a vocabulary and a structure to the world of improvisation, and so many role models world who dedicated their life to the pursuit of it. I first listened to Keith Jarrett and McCoy Tyner and worked my way back to Wynton Kelly, Duke Ellington and so many others, and forward in time as well.
As far as jazz on the accordion, I’ve definitely listened to Art Van Damme and he’s a great practitioner of jazz accordion. Personally, I’ve always tried to model my phrasing around jazz trumpet players and saxophonists. That way of accenting and approaching improvisation is something that I was very influenced by on piano as well.
At the end of the day, the accordion is a reed instrument just like saxophone, and if you are adept with the bellows, you can really make the instrument feel like it’s breathing. There are a few accordionists in jazz that I feel really captured the hard bop and post-bop aesthetic — Frank Marocco comes to mind especially, as well as some of Richard Galliano’s recordings. But I’d say my accordion heroes are mostly Brazilian — Sivuca, Dominguinhos, Vitor my teacher, Toninho Ferragutti, Bebe Kramer, etc. — and other global musicians like Petar Ralchev from Bulgaria.
How did piano and accordion inform one another, as they each move so differently? Or did you perhaps compartmentalize your playing?
I take a zoomed-out approach to the two instruments and their roles. If we look at the most ancient music, the first instruments were the voice and the drums/percussion. The piano is a percussive instrument like a drum (the hammer strikes the string to create a tone) and the accordion is like a voice (air moving through the reeds), so the combination of the two makes me feel like I have as much expressive range as I could ask for. I try to treat them independently from each other in that respect, and approach each one for what it is designed for.
That said, playing both has interesting consequences. As a small example, it’s much easier to play repeated notes on the accordion because the keys are lighter, but once I got into the habit of playing repeated notes as a texture on the accordion, suddenly I find myself going for that more on the piano as well. So they are probably influencing each other in ways I don’t even realize.
I know the accordion is bigger than what I joke about or make it all out to be. Can you say something about how you embrace it? What might I be missing about its joys, pains and complexities, especially as you approach it from a multicultural perspective?
Because of my background with the instrument, I really didn’t have any associations with it when I first picked it up. In many cultures in the world it’s very common (all of Europe, most of South America, parts of Asia, the Caribbean, etc.), and since I was studying with a Brazilian accordionist, I just kept getting introduced to so many amazing accordion recordings in every context, from solo to combo to accordion concertos with orchestra where the accordion is a featured soloist.
So only later did I begin to encounter people’s preconceptions about the accordion in the United States. I treat the accordion just like any other instrument that is less common in jazz (vibraphone or bass clarinet, for example). The fact that there is less recorded material means there’s so much under-explored musical potential that I really enjoy getting to experiment with. Whether it’s different music styles, blends with other instruments or textures within the band, I’m always finding new ways to incorporate the instrument into my music. I’ve also received many opportunities to play with legendary performers specifically because I play the accordion, so I’m so grateful I decided to pick it up.
When does jazz begin to creep into your life? To your music?
Even though I’m combining many different world music genres into my music, I see myself very much as a jazz musician, exploring these different influences through a jazz and improvisatory lens. I was mentored for many years by some incredible jazz musicians, including Curtis Lundy, Winard Harper and Deborah Davis, and more recently I’ve gotten to perform with some amazing jazz players, including multiple tours with Catherine Russell.
So for me jazz is the constant, and other genres of music creep into my life to various degrees. Apart from jazz, Brazilian music is the genre I play the most, and it’s become such a part of my life that I actually chose to avoid playing some of my Brazilian-inspired tunes on this record because I want to save those for my next album, in which I’m planning to record Brazilian-inspired pieces exclusively.
Jazz music is responsible for so much in my life even beyond performing and touring. The jazz community has really become a family for me, and when I travel to different parts of the world, I feel like I immediately have friends in all these places just because we share a love of the music.
So many people have inspired me — I mentioned some names above, but just on this album, I wrote tunes in tribute to Mulgrew Miller and Horace Silver. I try to wear my influences on my sleeve and very openly talk about all the people whose music has had an impact on me, but there are too many to list in any one place!
Do you ever compose via the accordion and how does that material slide separately from your other writing?
I usually compose on the piano just because I find the composition process to be mostly about getting ideas out in as unfiltered a way as possible from my brain to the instrument, and the piano is still a more direct connection. That said, I do sometimes find ideas on the accordion, and because of the layout of the left hand in circle of fifths, a lot of things that are easy to play on accordion are difficult on piano and vice versa. So new ideas come out on the accordion because of that.
So much of your music, mostly through the Nebula Project, is both “world” and otherworldly, rooted and unrooted. How did you develop that post-global soundtrack? How much of that growth would you attribute to your all-nations ensemble?
I grew up in New York, a very cosmopolitan city, and I had the privilege of attending concerts from performers all over the world from a very young age. One of our family friends ran an Indian arts not-for-profit, so in addition to various classical and jazz concerts, I was regularly seeing classical and contemporary Indian artists as well. So from a young age, the idea of exploring different musical cultures was deeply ingrained.
From there, I started performing with people who introduced me to music from different parts of the world. In addition to Vitor showing me various styles from Brazil, my first regular accordion gig was with a Croatian singer Astrid Kuljanic, who I still perform with regularly, and who incorporates folk music from Croatia into her show.
I started playing regularly with French singers, Indian vocalists, klezmer bands, Brazilian groups, Cuban boogaloo bands, all with musicians who had dedicated their lives to those styles. I got to take lessons with Irish and Romanian accordionists. When I started the Nebula Project, I already had this perspective and wanted to find musicians who were willing to go with me to all these places. And then it has become self-reinforcing, because now they are introducing me to new music based on where they are from — say, Japanese music that I’ve learned from Jasper, Puerto Rican and Caribbean music from Rafael, etc.
Can you connect the dots and or recognize the connective tissue between the first Nebula Project album Kites and Strings and the new one, The Longest Way Round?
I view each album as a snapshot in time. It captures the musical elements that are most prominent in my mind and my composition at any given time. I never go into any project with the mindset that I want to try to make it into something other than just what I’m hearing when I compose.
So in that regard, the first album I released is much more straightahead jazz than the most recent album, but they both capture elements of my compositional and improvisatory voice. At various points, I have worried whether my listeners would find it strange that each song of the album is coming from a different place, but at the end of the day, it is who I am as a musician. So more and more I’m just trying to embrace it.
I definitely hear more Baltic/Eastern European vibes on A Thousand Pebbles (2023) than I do throughout The Longest Way Round, features more R&B, cabaret and dancing J-Pop elements.
It’s just whatever I’m exploring in the moment. It’s not like my love of Baltic or Eastern European music is any less now than it was then, but I had an opportunity to explore that sound a little bit on my previous album, and there are other sounds that I wanted to explore in this album.
I’m sure those influences will come back on future projects, and I can say that even on my most recent trio tour last month, we were playing a Romanian folk dance medley as part of our regular rotation. It’s all in there, but there’s just so much amazing music that I’m hoping to get deeper into and only so many opportunities to record and perform.
Do you feel the influence/push from a particular band member? Or are there outside forces adrift? I know that bassist Marty Jaffe and drummer Ben Zweig have been with you the longest, then trumpeter Wayne Tucker, saxophonist Jasper Dutz and guitarist Rafael Rosa, and now (for the new record) percussionists Gustavo Di Dalva and Brad Dutz.
I’m fortunate that I’ve gotten to play with all the members of the Nebula Project for many years now, not only in the context of this band, but in all of their bands that they lead and as sideman together in other bands. So I not only feel all of their influences in significant ways, but I try to write music that specifically features them and their interests.
On this album, I wrote the tune “Last Call” with Wayne Tucker in mind, whose band plays a lot of R&B and backbeat-based music. I also got a lot of good advice from Rafael about playing the montuno and merengue-based pieces on the album in a more rhythmically grounded way, and the J-Pop elements come both from my own interests and from my experience playing anime and video game music in Jasper’s band.
The West African-inspired piece “Círculo” had its roots in conversations I had with Ben Zweig about his study of drumming in Cameroon. On this album I didn’t have a specific piece that prominently featured Marty Jaffe, but on the previous record I wrote the tune “The Bell From Europe” with his arco bass sound in mind.
The percussion also added so much to the album. Gustavo Di Dalva is really a magician on so many percussion instruments, and I’ve gotten to play many shows with him through the Brazilian forró scene in New York, so I knew he would add so much. Ben Zweig and I talked about how to play the drum parts in a way that would leave space for him. Brad Dutz (Jasper’s father) was a last-minute addition — he’s an expert in Irish bones and his contribution to the Irish piece on the record (“Sheridan’s Reel”) really elevated it and brought out the traditional Irish spirit so much more.
What can you say about the blunt, hard bop feel of “Fool’s Gold” and “Albatross”? You don’t seem to often do anything straightahead or bop-oriented.
I always try to include something solidly in the jazz tradition on every album — even within the Nebula Project repertoire, we did “Halfway to Wonderland” and “Laughing on the Inside” on the Kites and Strings album, and “Implicit Attitude” and “The Village Steps” on A Thousand Pebbles.
As an aspiring jazz composer, I think I was most influenced by the hard bop combos — Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Clifford Brown and Max Roach, Horace Silver — and even though the instrumentation of the Nebula Project is very different and the influences are more varied, I see the Nebula Project as in that tradition of the two- or three-horn jazz combo. “Albatross” is a tune inspired by Mulgrew Miller and his band Wingspan, in particular a tune called “Go East Young Man.” And “Fool’s Gold” is very inspired by the music of Horace Silver.
Lastly, I take my James Joyce and my Ulysses very seriously. What’s with the Joyce quote as your title, or is it just a thing you are feeling? [Ed.: The full quote is “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”]
I confess that I haven’t made my way through reading Ulysses yet, though it is on my list to get to as soon as possible. But the quote expresses a sentiment I’ve been feeling more and more recently.
I spent more time touring than at home last year, with no signs of slowing down this year. It really does seem like the more experiences I have, the more places I travel to and the more music from different cultures that I try to learn, the more I find myself back in my inner voice and my identity.
My teacher Frank Kimbrough at Juilliard used to say that as we develop, it’s like we’re adding our five percent originality to the 95 percent that is our unique set of influences and interests, and blending that together into what becomes our musical “voice.”
I really feel my life has been exactly that experience, trying to get outside of myself and the way I hear music, which has pushed me back into myself and allowed me to express the things I’d been hearing before. So I felt that The Longest Way Round, which is a quote my mom always said to me growing up, really fit the spirit of this album. JT