No one knows the accordion until they have heard a performance by Richard Galliano — a musician of staggering virtuosity who has created new horizons for an instrument seen in the past as the poor relation of others by its critics. He performs in Moscow on Friday.
The accordion has been maligned by some as inferior compared with classical instruments such as the violin or flute because of its mechanical form. But it is precisely this characteristic that Galliano has harnessed to power a one-man musical revolution. Allied to the sensitivity possible fr om bellows control, the range of sounds that the instrument offers has been forged and mixed to realize extraordinary new dimensions in music. In his hands, the accordion’s sound can transform from a church organ at full-throttle playing Bach, to an instrument ripping out raw blues, or from growling gritty tango from the backstreets of Argentina before whisking you off to Paris and the musette strains perhaps more familiar to those who’ve not yet explored the world of Galliano.
His music is literally unimaginable until heard. Like Jimi Hendrix, Stephane Grappelli or Miles Davis, Galliano has revolutionized his instrument but in different idioms, setting a standard of greatness. And comparison across such a wide musical spectrum is apt: His virtuosity is at ease across a range of genres — from classical, to jazz, to tango and beyond. Add to this a prodigious recording output and continuous touring across the world with a variety of ensembles and collaborators, and there is no one to compare to the maestro.
Galliano, who turns sixty later this year, was born in Cannes in the south of France, learning from his Italian father Lucien from the age of four, before studying at the Nice Conservatory. Exposure to the music of jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown led Galliano to the realization that no one in France had ever attempted such music on the accordion. The world of French cafe musette and chanson music dominated, the notion of swing or modern jazz incomprehensible to the instrument’s mainstream fraternity.
But across the Atlantic, starting in the postwar era, American accordion geniuses like Art Van Damme were tackling jazz with the squeezebox, along with others in Europe like Dutch legend Mat Mathews. Armed with his classical and French training, Galliano began to give voice to the new musical language powered by reed and bellows, only to soar in time even beyond the great pioneers of the early years of accordion jazz.
After moving to Paris, Galliano was to meet another legend in the 1980s from a different idiom — the Argentine tango maestro Astor Piazolla, also living in the French capital. Thus began a deep and lasting association with tango, which has been a huge influence on Galliano’s musical career. Their friendship also was to mean a return — encouraged by Piazolla — to his own French musical roots, with Galliano eventually doing for musette what his mentor did for Argentine tango. But the dynamic and variety of his musical development continues — his just-released latest album is devoted entirely to the music of Bach, an immersion he likens to his absorption in Piazolla’s work — but not one that he is necessarily replacing.
“Piazolla is my friend forever. With all music, you must become entirely subsumed in the form to interpret it correctly. I don’t compare the music of the two. My life as an artist and musician has brought me to turn and encounter Bach and record his music after what has been a long journey. It takes time to make a beautiful record and create a fine project,” he said.
While some talk about the accordion “before” Galliano and “after” Galliano, he pays gratitude to the influences that he believes shaped his music, such as Van Damme, French great Gus Viseur and Italian-born contemporary Tony Murena. He says the instrument is evolving constantly, with Russian accordionists among the many bringing it to new horizons.
His appearance in Moscow on Friday is as part of Le Jazz, which brings French-inspired jazz to Russia. Appearing with the Tangaria Quartet, Galliano will also perform in Kazan, St. Petersburg and Bryansk.
He said Russia holds a special fondness for him, a country wh ere the accordion — in all its variants — is played to a standard of excellence probably unmatched in terms of the numbers of top performers compared with any other country.
“It is absolutely fabulous, the love there is in Russia for this instrument,” he said.
Richard Galliano plays April 9 at 8 p.m. Le Jazz festival. Gorky MKhAT Theater, 22 Tverskoi Bulvar. Metro Pushkinskaya. (495) 687-8773, www.mxat-teatr.ru.
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