Time to dust off your accordions, Shanghai

The 2006 Shanghai International Accordion Festival kicked off yesterday! All of your favorites will be performing, including Peter Soave, Alexey Peresidly, Nikolay Sivchuk, Antonio Mancini, Pavel Fenjuk, Jerome Richard and Cyril Blanchard. All told, there are 500 accordion players in Shanghai this week -- 501 if you count the guy who always plays on the corner of Nanjing Xi Lu and Shaanxi Lu.

Here's the event schedule, which unfortunately doesn't say where any of the events are. It looks like most of the major concerts are at the Shanghai Art Theatre. Ticket information is here. You can even read Daily Reports from the event.

Life is good.