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Sam Reider, piano and accordion, and Jorge Glem, Venezuelan cuatro: Reimagining tradition. Photo by Mario Dávila. Courtesy CieloMar Entertainment.

The line might sound like the opening of a comedy routine: “An accordionist and a cuatro player meet at a party …,” but the music by composer, pianist, and accordion player Sam Reider and Venezuela cuatro master Jorge Glem is no joke. Their debut recording, Brooklyn-Cumaná (Guataca Foundation), is a smart, beautifully played reimagining of musical traditions.

The results of their approach can be delightfully disorienting.

The spirited opening track, “Homer the Roamer,” sounds Irish, or perhaps Galician, before transitioning in a rhythmic explosion to “Sábana Blanca,” a Venezuelan song. As it unfolds, the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

“It’s actually more complex than it seems because the song itself is not Irish,” said Reider in a recent phone conversation. “It was written by a fiddler named John Hartford, one of the most important figures in American folk music of the 20th century, probably in the 1970s. It’s an original composition in which he was trying to create a Celtic-sounding tune. So here’s this American guy writing a fake Celtic song that Jorge is now playing, bringing in his Venezuelan culture, with me on the accordion. And by the way, the accordion has no place really in traditional American fiddle music.”

The rest of the recording includes originals by Reider, such as “Del Boca Vista,” written for his band Human Hands, “Moonlight Merengue,” and “Skeleton Rag,” a steamy gumbo of ragtime, choro, and Klezmer. Glem contributes “Malagueña Cumanesa,” a song of longing for his native Cumaná, and brings to the table pieces such as “Amarilis,” a traditional waltz from his home state of Sucre, Venezuela, and “Matapalo y Fuga,” a fast joropo that features him on vocals.

(Reider and Glem are presenting the album at the Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd St. Miami, on June 17, at 8 p.m. )

The Rodney Dangerfield of musical instruments, the accordion was, from the 1920s to the 1950s and the advent of rock and roll, the tool of choice for pop music in North America. With the explosion of World Music in the 1980s and interest from artists as disparate as jazz keyboardist Gil Goldstein, The Band, David Byrne, and Paul Simon, it enjoyed a deserved reassessment. Meanwhile, nearly every country in the Americas has an accordion music tradition, from Norteño in Mexico and vallenato in Colombia to chamamé in Argentina and forró in Brazil.

The cuatro, a small four-string guitar, is the quintessential instrument of Venezuelan folk music.

“The cuatro is present in more than 95% of the traditional music of Venezuela,” notes Glem. “But as an accompaniment instrument, playing basic chords and keeping the rhythm.”  What Glem doesn’t mention is that as a modern virtuoso, he has taken the explorations of players over the past 15 years and often pushed the instrument well past traditional boundaries. A notable player with a seemingly fearless curiosity, Glem has performed with the LA Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel but also singer Ruben Blades or pianist Jon Batiste at Carnegie Hall.

He recalls that the improbable collaboration with Reider began in 2016 at a party on the Upper West Side in New York City. “Sam and I started playing, and there was perfect communication. We didn’t speak a word. We couldn’t. I didn’t speak English, and he didn’t speak Spanish, so everything said was through music,” says Glem. “At the time, Sam and I lived an hour away from each other by train. We would go from the South Bronx to Crown Heights, Brooklyn. We would meet at my place one day and at his the next, and we didn’t talk at all. I mean, we couldn’t talk. It was all through Google Translate and all those things. It was very interesting to see what you could do just through music. We showed each other songs and learned them by rote, copying what the other was doing. It was really cool.”

For Glem, a native of Cumaná, the capital city of Venezuela’s Sucre State, the sound of it all also had a familiar echo.

“We have an accordion in Venezuelan music, especially in the eastern part of Venezuela, where I am from,” he says. “But it’s not the keyboard accordion Sam plays. It’s the diatonic button accordion used in vallenato. We use it to play joropo, the typical music of that part of the country. “

Born in San Francisco, Reider, a classically trained pianist, composer, and educator with a passion for jazz, had also become interested in American folk music, leading to the accordion. He needed a more portable instrument, “and also the piano is such a large instrument, and so formal. It didn’t have the casualness, the intimacy that I was looking for,” he says. He rescued an old accordion from his family’s basement and started playing it “almost as a bit of a joke.” Reider, a well-schooled piano player, never took a lesson on the accordion. But as he got deeper into the instrument and began traveling around the world with it, he was exposed to folkloric traditions from different countries. “The accordion became my vehicle for communicating with people from different cultures and exploring,” he said. “It’s an unpretentious instrument and rootsy, and people respond to that. It’s become this unlikely window into the wide world of music.”

Sam Reider and Jorge Glem. Photo by Mario Dávila. Courtesy CieloMar Entertainment.

Challenged to communicate without words, the music between Reider and Glem, “happened through improvisation and deep listening, ” says the accordionist. “The two instruments complement each other very well in their limitations. Jorge is a rhythmic prodigy, and I am not, but still, much of the music on the record is about playing with rhythm in interesting ways. The accordion is great at playing bass notes, melodies, and chords but less so at dealing with rhythm. After all, the accordion is a wind instrument — but rhythm is the common ground that connects us.”

Notably, throughout the recording, the music sounds organic, lived-in. Think folk music from an imaginary country. It sounds at once dirt-floors earthy and sophisticated, vaguely familiar, traditional and, ina turn, startingly modern.

“I have always liked to mix with musicians from other parts of the world and say to them, ‘Look, I come from a country that I love, with music that I love, and I have a passion for it. And I know that you have the same passion for your music, your instrument, and your country.’ “says Glem. “Connecting those passions from a point of mutual respect and admiration makes music and beautiful and interesting things happen.”