Richard Galliano - Accordionist
The French Jazz Musician Who Made the Accordion Swing
For many years the accordion was little more than a cliche of Paris street life. But in Richard Galliano's hands it swings as hard as any Hammond Organ.
In 2001 Richard Galliano made a recording with the French jazz Hammond Organ player Eddy Louiss called Face To Face, which is an extraordinary mix of straight ahead jazz, tango and musette, which, once out of the confines of Paris and France, also takes on a hint of the musical heat haze of North Africa and beyond, with the very different keyboards melding together so well that at times it becomes difficult to seperate them, until they peel away from each other like aircraft in a dogfight to play wonderfully laid back solos that are stuffed full of 200 of musical references.
Born in Cannes
Richard Galliano was born on December 12th,1950, in the southern French city of Cannes. His father, who was of Italian extraction - and an accomplished pianist and accordionist himself - taught his son to play both of those instruments before enrolling him, at the age of 14, into the Nice Conservatory, where he studied counterpoint, harmony, and the thrombone, at the same time winning several international accordion competitions, playing anything from Tchaikovsky to Gershwin. He graduated in 1969 with a 1e Prix d' Excellence.
Clifford Brown
But it was when Galliano heard the American jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown (he memorised all of that musician's recorded solos) that his musical thoughts and ambitions changed, quickly realising that his future should, could, be that of a jazz musician.
What he also realised was that the accordion was an instrument sadly neglected in the jazz world (although he was probably aware of the British player Jack Emblow's attempts to establish the instrument within the genre during the 1950s and 1960s); a situation he intended to change.
Paris
Throughout the 1970s, in Paris, he established a fierce reputation as an extraordinary accompanist, playing with such stars as Charles Aznavour, Juliet Greco, George Moustaki, and Allain Leprest, with whom, as the online jazz magazine, all about jazz, points out he recorded the album"...Voce A Mano [which] won him the Grand Prix du Disque from the Academie Charles Cros...". It also brought him to the attention of a sophisticated French listening audience. He was on his way.
By the 1980s Galliano was established firmly within the French popular musical establishment, of which jazz, then as now, played a huge part, enabling Galliano to use the accordion as a major solo instrument. An ability that not only brought him to the attention of the theatre going audiences of the Comedie Francaise - where he wrote and performed the music for a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream - but also to international audiences when he toured with such jazz luminaries as Chet Baker, Joe Zawinul, and Ron Carter.
The New Musette
In the 1990s Galliano created what he called the 'New Musette', which was a look backwards to the Parissienne Musette, a popular music of the 1880s and '90s that centred around a bagpipe (a musette),plus clarinet, mandolin, saxophone, trumpet and bandoneon. Galliano's New Musette group, which, apart from himself, consisted of guitar, bass and drums, became an immediate hit, attracting such guests players as Toots Thielemans (harmonica), who recorded with Galliano, and the aforementioned Eddy Louiss.
Travelling and Recording
The early 21st century has seen Richard Galliano either on the road with musicians such as Gary Burton, or in the recording studio, creating albums that mix various musical styles with his beautifully melodic jazz; with his current Tangaria Quartet - which consists of, apart from Richard, Alexis Cardenas on violin, Philippe Aerts on bass, and Rafael Mejia percussion - creating some of the most exciting jazz of its kind ever heard.
Sources
The online jazz magazine - all about jazz
Richard Galliano's Official Website
Liner Notes to the CDs Gallianissimo!, Richard Galliano/Eddy Louiss - Face To Face, and The Tangaria Quartet
