Courtesy Joann Birsa
Audio By Carbonatix
Josephine Ann “Joann” Stevens Birsa was four when she first heard the accordion, and it was love at first listen for the Leadville girl.
“I just loved it, and began begging for one,” the grandmother of four recalls. “My parents couldn’t afford it and really, a four-year-old shouldn’t be trying to play anyway, because of the coordination of both hands and the bellows.”
But eventually, her parents made the girl’s dream come true. “By the time they could afford it, I was about ten and a half,” Birsa says. “They found a really nice little accordion at a local jeweler’s.” Over two months, they paid a total of $100 to purchase the instrument she’d devote herself to for the next eight decades.
Birsa’s parents were ethnic Slovenians on both sides, and although the instrument was extremely popular in central Europe, she was the first in her family to take up the accordion. “My mother’s family had the musical talent,” she recalls. “She took guitar lessons for a while when studying at the University of Colorado Boulder.”
Birsa herself studied with Sister Mary Giovanni Giacomini, a nun at Leadville’s Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, and first performed onstage at the Tabor Opera House at age eleven. “I was scared to death, and shaking like a leaf,” she says.
But the stage fright faded, and (relatively) big money soon followed. “In 1954, just before seventh grade, the Elks or Eagles or some softball team had a picnic up at Turquoise Lake, and invited a number of kids to play,” Birsa remembers. “They asked me to play longer and then passed around a hat. I got about $32, including some silver dollars that I still have today.”
Birsa joined the high school band and took up tuba, which she played all through college at CU Boulder, where she majored in music education and minored in Russian language. After that, “I taught school for a year and a half, but by then I was married and pregnant with my oldest,” she says. “Back then, being pregnant was like a death knell for a teacher. You had to leave by the end of your fourth month unless you had tenure. You were damaged goods. I never taught school again.”
After raising three daughters, Birsa seized the opportunity to go to grad school and earned her master’s in music performance (classical accordion, of course) from the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music in 1993. “I held a 4.0,” she says, laughing, “and my graduate recital took one and a half years to prepare. This was not playing oompahpah.”
While accordion music has largely fallen out of favor in the United States, you can listen to classic accordion masters like Charles Magnante (a favorite of Birsa) on Spotify, or catch local darlings DeVotchKa at the Boulder Theater on February 14, 2026. Or Birsa at Denver’s Christkindl Market, where she’ll be on December 22.
Birsa continues to teach privately — “I’ve had students from eight to eighty,” she says — and perform publicly, wielding her Titano Emperor at events like Georgetown’s Christmas Festival, Oktoberfests and the Christkindl Market. She plays sitting down these days, with a “roadie” (usually one of her daughters) helping to strap on the heavy instrument.
“It’s kind of hard for me to do a lot,” Birsa admits. “My body is not in good shape, but my mind is. I still have all my marbles, and I do enjoy getting out to play, especially for kids. They come and dance and have a good time with their parents, and that’s the best. Because people are so friendly. Give them a little bit of peppy music. and it makes them happy.”
Master accordionist Joann Birsa will perform from 2 to 4 p.m. Monday, December 22, at Denver Christkindl Market on the Tivoli Quad, 1000 Larimer Street on the Auraria Campus.
