As a composer, he's broken out of the format

Will Holshouser grew up in Cambridge, but he didn't pick up the accordion until he'd left his childhood home near Porter Square and started at Wesleyan University. Holshouser was playing piano back then, and as he describes it, his infatuation with his new instrument was as accidental as it was sudden.

``When I was 18," Holshouser says from his home in Brooklyn, ``I was kind of at this place where I felt like, `Well, if I practice these standards five hours a day for the next 10 years, I'll end up sounding a lot like my teacher.' And at that point a friend of mine bought me an old accordion at a rummage sale, and gave it to me for a surprise. It was almost like a joke. It was in terrible condition, it was hardly playable, but I just fell in love with it."

Holshouser, 37, stuck with it, and tonight he and his trio celebrate the release of their second CD, ``Singing to a Bee" at the Lily Pad in Cambridge.

At Wesleyan, Holshouser studied composition early on with the saxophonist Bill Barron. When Barron died in 1989, Wesleyan brought in an even more avant-garde composer to replace him: Anthony Braxton.

``Braxton really blasted the doors open for me as a composer," says Holshouser, ``because he taught me about surprise and to really break out of the standard head-solos-head form of jazz. My music doesn't sound very much like his music, because of my interest in folk music and the various accordion styles, but he really broke me out of some ruts as a composer."

In those days, Holshouser was busy teaching himself the accordion on the side. He gigged with a band, discovered the music of Clifton Chenier and Astor Piazzolla, and got a grant from Wesleyan to spend a couple of weeks in Louisiana exploring Cajun and Zydeco accordion technique. He graduated in 1991, and began gigging around New York. In a stroke of luck, in 1995 he began studying with the legendary accordionist William Schimmel, who played with everyone from the Tango Project to Tom Waits.

``I'd been in New York for a few years," says Holshouser, ``and I'd heard his playing on Tom Waits records. Then one day I was standing on the subway platform. I had my accordion, and somebody came up to me and said, `Hey, is that an accordion?' "

The other guy, it turned out, was already studying accordion with Schimmel, and he enthusiastically recommended that Holshouser do likewise.

``When he first came to me," Schimmel says of Holshouser, ``he certainly had skills in the realm of a person who was self-taught. But he was pretty much a one-handed accordionist."

Holshouser's keyboard hand was much more developed than the other one, so he and Schimmel went to work on developing the left hand, and then on getting the two hands to work together. Schimmel also worked with Holshouser compositionally, among other things steering him toward the French classical composer Olivier Messiaen, whose work Holshouser pays homage to with his piece ``For the Birds."

``The final phase, in terms of technique, was his establishment of an inner pulse, which he ended up calling his `inner clock,' " Schimmel says. ``That's an important factor in Will's playing. When you listen to him, his beat is near perfect -- and that's true whether he's playing with a group or whether he's playing by himself."

Holshouser's trio with bassist David Phillips and trumpeter Ron Horton came together in 1998 after Holshouser spent some time concentrating on performing solo. He'd had a trio with a conventional rhythm section before that, but wanted to play without drums.

``In part, I was inspired by tango music, the music of Astor Piazzolla, because that music is very rhythmic without drums. I wanted to have a group where we could have different rhythmic setups, but without a percussionist to lean on, so that the dynamics could be wider."

Holshouser's writing for the group features lots of bowing from Phillips, and Horton playing almost constantly on some pieces -- but always with Braxton's call for surprise in mind.

``A lot of what I like about traditional accordion music is the kind of simplicity, the emotional directness, the rhythmic drive," Holshouser explains. ``So a lot of my content is kind of inspired by that, but I think if you put it into a more surprising form, then sometimes the emotional content comes through more effectively."

The Will Holshouser trio performs at 8 tonight at the Lily Pad. Tickets $10. Call

617-388-1168 or visit www.lily-pad.net.