Bio:
During his long and prolific career, Richard Galliano has recorded more than 50 albums under his own name. He has also collaborated with an impressive number of prestigious artists and musicians:
Jazz: Chet Baker, Eddy Louiss, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Charlie Haden, Gary Burton, Michel Portal, Toots Thielemans and Kurt Elling.
French songs: Serge Reggiani, Claude Nougaro, Barbara, Juliette Greco, Dick Annegarn, Georges Moustaki, Allain Leprest, Charles Aznavour, and Serge Gainsbourg.
He has also collaborated with Nigel Kennedy for his classical repertoire and a large number of orchestras.
During his world tours, he has performed in the most prestigious theatres: the Lincoln Center in New York, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Accademia Santa Cécilia in Rome, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Théâtre Marinsky in Saint-Petersburg, as well as the New Philharmonies in Hamburg and Paris.
In 1997 Richard Galliano was awarded a “Victoire de la Musique Jazz” for his album New York Tango.
He won again in 1998 for his album Blow Up, recorded together with Michel Portal. In 2009, he was appointed Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters.
In 2010, he received the “SACEM Prize for the Best Pedagogical Work for the Accordion Method”, written by him and his father Lucien Galliano, for Lemoine Publishing.
He recorded a Bach album with Deutsche Grammophon in 2010. This album broke classic sales records with more than 70,000 copies sold.
He was named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2011.
He won the “Victoire de la Musique Classique” in 2014 and also received the “Best Composer of the Year 2014 Award”.
Increasing his classical repertoire recording, he recorded a new album in 2016, this time dedicated to the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The year 2016 also saw the release of a new quartet album New Jazz Musette released under the Italian label Ponderosa music&art, thirty years after his 1985 album Spleen, which introduced the musical concept New Jazz Musette.
In 2016 he was promoted to Officer of the National Order of Merit by the French President, François Hollande.
In 2017 the album Aria was released, which was recorded as a duet in the Reformed Church of Bern (CH) with the organist Thierry Escaich at Jade-Universal. This album showcased the unexpected alliance between the organ and the accordion, made more sublime by the remarkable acoustics of the church and the quality of the organ.
A few weeks before his death, Michel Legrand entrusted Richard Galliano with the artistic direction of two “Tribute to Michel Legrand” concerts planned for April 2018 at the Grand Rex in Paris, together with Michel Portal, Ibrahim Maalouf and Natalie Dessay.
In May 4, 2018 Richard Galliano performed solo at the Tokyo International Forum. The album The Tokyo Concert was released in spring 2019 under the Jade-Universal label. This is the album of his maturity, greeted with great enthusiasm by the international press “Richard Galliano at summit of his art ”and by the ever larger audiences. He gave more than 60 accordion recitals, notably as part of the Festival de Saint-Germaindes-des-Près, the Montreal Jazz Festival and the La Roque d’Anthéron Festival.
Following the death of his friend Michel Legrand, Richard Galliano wanted pay tribute to him with an album, Tribute to Michel Legrand, recorded at the České Budějovice Philharmonic in Prague, in June 2019 with the Prague String Quintet. (Jade-Sony)
His next creation was an oratorio Les Chemins Noirs, based on the novel by René Frégni. The first performance took place at The Musical Scene of Boulogne Billancourt on January 30, 2020.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Thierry Sola
Official Main Management & Public Relations
GSM +33 (0)7 87 79 43 34 [email protected]
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).