• 1 Sep 2021

BlueStar^®: the new stars

Excellent, innovative, essential and inimitable. Made in Italy

Our new BlueStar^® accordion reeds will be available for sale from September 1^th 2021.

The new BlueStar^® reeds are a natural consequence of our company vision oriented towards music and musicians. They are the conclusion of a process of observation, study and improvement applied to our work and to our product, reeds. And they are a new beginning, for the positive implications that they will have in furthering the improvement of the accordion.

The BlueStar^® brand, registered by Voci Armoniche, is an important innovation in the history of accordion reeds. Almost seventy years after Luigi Antonelli designed and realized the tipo a mano (hand-finished) reeds back in 1952, today we are presenting a new reed that pushes the boundaries of construction concept and semantics as well.

It is not a handmade reed. It is not a hand-finished reed. It is not a variant, or a restyling of either of these. The BlueStar^® is a new reed, which is completely different from its predecessors and those on the market today because it contains substantial innovations and improvements. Elémire Zolla once wrote that leaving the space in which time bends over us is the single most beautiful thing we can do.

Our new-concept BlueStar^® reed combines the authentic quality of a handmade reed - the very best of Italian artisan traditions - with eight years of research. We have carefully studied acoustic “flavour”, beauty, and the expressive fullness of sound for the accordion. Of course, technology is essential when designing new reeds, but creativity, talent and ingenuity also play the main part in the process, and above all the sense of beauty, because acoustics and music translate into art and beauty.

The basic thought process behind the creation of the BlueStar^® reeds is the combination of modern improvements with the experience handed down to us throughout the history of our production: the idea of combining tradition and innovation, and simplicity with the highest possible quality, in terms of functionality and acoustics. Our research and experimentation activities have taken us on a journey towards fully understanding the accordion reed and how it works, and the possibilities and variables that determine its quality; and then distinguish, with the criterion of improving the acoustic quality, between what was layered thus was to be removed and what was missing to add more value.

The result of our research are the BlueStar^® reeds. The key concepts behind our new reed - the five points of the star are:

• excellence, – i.e., a qualitative value that allows our reeds to stand out in the particular of the single note as in all reeds of the instrument, thanks to their very high acoustic and functional potential.
• innovation, – i.e., a proposal of contents that did not exist before, to overcome previous limitations to proceed towards wider horizons.
• essentiality, – i.e., simplicity, which is our end goal. Whatever fails to serve our highest purpose can be removed, so that only the very best remains. Simplicity as an extreme form of refinement.
• inimitability – i.e., something that cannot be copied or replicated by others, as it is the result of a process, i.e. of premises, conditions, rigorous methods, refined skills and hidden measures, which are implemented on the sub-part of the part of each single reed and then brought together as a whole that can be arranged in trebles or reed harmonies layouts.
• made in Italy – i.e., true identity and natural qualification. Consistency with a tradition of quality to be valued, developed and kept alive, but never used as an income.

A beautiful shape leads to a beautiful sound: the essence of the BlueStar^® sound principle lies in this slender, yet powerful energy unit.

The name chosen for the new reeds is inspired by the stars, which shine above enchanting those who raise their eyes looking at the sky. Blue is the colour of steel after it is heat-treated to improve its metallurgical qualities by using traditional watch-making techniques. Blue is also the colour of the sky and the sea, and conjures up thoughts of the precious, rare, and sublime. The blue tongues will also be the mean to allow musicians to easily and confidently check the product when purchasing new reeds, to be sure that that the pre-tuning and tuning of each piece have been made with the utmost care and skill, i.e. that the functional integrity of tongues has not been compromised and the reeds damaged. The colour blue will also be used to safeguard the incredibly fine work we do in our factory and to guarantee sound quality. It will also help to remind those involved in the tuning process to preserve said quality by only removing what is necessary, and never too much. We chose an English name for the new reeds as English is the language of the world, and because the new reeds will be in the accordions and the music all over the world.

Conceived and designed by Lorenzo Antonelli in 2013, the BlueStar^® have been gradually created under his careful supervision in later years, with the essential contribution of the employees of Voci Armoniche.

In the early distribution phase the BlueStar® will be made available to our partner manufacturers who have adjusted their reed blocks to achieve the full expression of the sound potential offered by the new reeds, so adding value upon value.

We would like to thank Stefano Pierpaoli, Alket Zenunaj, Giorgio Grassi, Sandro Fiorentini, Marcello Petroselli, Alessio Rosati, Orietta Palazzesi, Stefano Gioacchini, Luca Troscè, Luca Verducci and Piergiorgio Caporaletti, who all generously contributed their talent and time to the new reeds, and, we believe, the gratitude will also come from the musicians who will play with BlueStar reeds in the years to come.

Osimo, September 1^th 2021