If You Love Me

This album by accordionist Richard Galliano is entitled If You Love Me ( L'Hymne   l'Amour ) and it marks the beginning of a significant collaboration with Gary Burton, an outstanding vibes player who, like Galliano, is a musician of extraordinary poetic feeling. The rhythm is made up of the vastly experienced bass player George Mraz and drummer Clarence Penn, one of the best drummers of his generation.
In If You Love Me ( L'Hymne   l'Amour ) there are five tracks by the magnificent Argentine composer and bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla: Milonga Is Coming, Triunfal, Soledad, Operation Tango and Romance del Diablo. Besides the splendid melody that gives the CD its title, written by Edith Piaf and Marguerite Monnot, there are Waltz For Debby by Bill Evans, the beautiful theme from the film Il Postino by Louis Bacalov and Para Jobim by Galliano. To complete this fine picture is a piece by Bach, taken
from his Symphony No. 11 in D Minor. Richard Galliano affirms This album evokes, I believe, an intense emotion and profound feeling of Peace and Love, a chiaroscuro like a Rembrandt painting or a poem by Lamartine. The vibraphone s blades vibrate with the keys of my accordion and will, I hope, make your soul vibrate to this Hymne   l'Amour that raises itself, more than ever, against violence, terrorism and war. Words to which there is no need to add more.