Anvar & Zakir Azarbaijanian Great Garmon Players

V-Accordion Naming History

V-accordion Naming History
(From "Accordions Worldwide")

In 1967 Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of the Roland
Corporation, a leading manufacturer of electronic musical
instruments, travelled to Italy and had the chance to meet some
accordion craftsmen in the Castelfidardo area. He was so
fascinated by this instrument that he bought two accordions to
bring home and started to cherish the dream of creating an
electronic accordion.
This dream was later on supported also by Francesco Rauchi and
Luigi Bruti in Roland Europe S.p.A., a member of the Roland
Corporation group located in Europe, namely in Acquaviva
Picena, in the Marche region.
Thanks to the advanced state-of-the-art achieved by the digital
technology, Roland could finally add another milestone in the
history of digital musical instruments: the V-Accordion, namely
the “Virtual Accordion” equipped with a powerful digital
modelling technology.
Francesco Rauchi passed away prematurely and could not see
that dream become true. But to honour his memory the models
of the V-Accordion line-up are identified with the “FR”
acronym.