The European trio Mare Nostrum is a joint venture of the Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren, the Italian trumpeter and flugelhorn player Paolo Fresu and the French accordionist Richard Galliano. The group takes its name from the similarly entitled album that these three exceptional musicians released early this year: Mare Nostrum. The three totally different musical backgrounds of the musicians blend together perfectly in an organic way on the CD. Richard Galliano started to play the accordion at a young age but since people thought the accordion was not a "real" instrument he decided to study trombone and composition at the conservatory in Nice. But you can't deny what's in your blood and he decided to combine his love of the accordion with jazz. Subsequently, Galliano did for the French "musette" what Piazzolla did for the Argentine tango: he stretched the genre and gave it more depth. With Mare Nostrum he makes pan-European music in which Brel, Ravel and sounds from Italian cinema complement and complete one another.
