It is certainly not wrong to call Richard Galliano the French Astor Piazzolla of the accordion. However, Galliano does not pay homage to Argentine Tango, but to French folk music in the form of the Musette. This comes usually as a chanson; not so, however, with Richard Galliano, who transferred it to the accordion carrying it on to the world of jazz. And this he did very successful indeed. Galliano’s Jazz Musette owes its success not to the sight of a jazz musician to the most French of French folk music, but to a French grown up in the haze of the musette. Galliano's father was a classic musette player. To distance himself from the father, the young Richard devoted himself to classical music before switching to jazz already in early youth to later accompany French chanson singers like Charles Aznavour and Juliette Greco on the accordion. The decisive kick in the direction of Musette received Richard Galliano from Astor Piazzolla in the mid-eighties. The Argentinian master of the Tango accordion motivated the French accordionist to develop his own accordion style. The result is the Jazz Musette, which quickly became established and becoming the hallmark of Richard Galliano. The current album, on which the accordionist is accompanied by Sylvain Luc - guitar, Philippe Aerts - Bass and André Ceccarelli - drums, is kind of a retrospective of thirty years of New Musette, which has brought about no less than two dozen CDs and which can be looked to be a forecast to the New Jazz Musette still to come.

The songs of the new album come so fresh that it hardly keeps you in the chair. In fact, the New Jazz Musette unfolds an enthralling, but also contemplative effect on the listener, like the Argentine tango of an Astor Piazzolla, who surely would have enjoyed the French complement of his tangos, the musette, transposed into jazz, presented by the accordion master Richard Galliano. The typical French flair, indeed the smell of the musette, has not lost any effect by its transmission into the jazz world. On the contrary, the musette, which belongs to the treasure of the French folk music, has gained momentum and conviction in the jazz variant.

Despisers of the accordion, who for instance during childhood had been compelled to learn to play on this instrument, which was used for festivities and celebrations for alleged folk music, will see the erstwhile unloved accordion in a completely new light through the album New Jazz Musette and experience this instrument as colorful and rhythmic mediator of boundless joie de vivre, perhaps daring a new access to the accordion.

The recording technique of the download of this album does the rest to make the Jazz Musette glowingly served by the Richard Galliano to become an intoxicating event spilling with joy of life.

Richard Galliano, acccorodion
Sylvain Luc, chitarra
Philippe Aerts, double bass