Juan Galiardo Trio, Brecon Jazz Club, The Muse Arts Centre, Brecon, 09/09/2025.

Juan Galiardo – piano, Aidan Thorne – double bass, Patrick Barrett-Donlon – drums

The Spanish pianist and composer Juan Galiardo has been a popular visitor to Brecon since first appearing at the 2013 Brecon Jazz Festival as part of a quintet that included his compatriots Celia Mur (vocals) and Arturo Serra (vibraphone).

I first saw Galiardo play the following year when he and Serra co-led a short “Espana-Cymru” tour featuring a combination of Spanish and Welsh musicians. I covered the shows in Abergavenny and Brecon with the Spanish duo joined for the former by bassist  Ashley John Long and drummer Phil Redfox O’Sullivan 

The Brecon date took place a few days later and was a double bill with the Cardiff University Big Band. On this occasion the rhythm team featured tonight’s bassist Aidan Thorne and drummer Mark O’Connor. Both shows are reviewed elsewhere on this site.

Galiardo returned to Brecon Jazz Club in 2018 to perform a show at The Muse in the company of O’Sullivan and bassist Ruth Bowen, a performance that is also reviewed elsewhere on The Jazzmann.

During the Covid years Galiardo was part of the 2020 ‘Virtual’ Brecon Jazz Festival when his trio featuring bassist Rafa Sibajas and drummer Jose Luis Gomez, recording together in a studio in Granada, collaborated with UK based vocalist Delee Dube, whose singing was added from her home in London.

At the 2022 ‘hybrid’ BJF Galiardo’s live show at the Riverside Arts Centre in Sunbury on Thames with a trio featuring bassist  Matyas Hofecker and drummer Alphonse Vitale was livestreamed to an audience at The Muse in Brecon. This event represented a collaboration between Brecon Jazz and Mood Indigo Events, the London and South East organisation co-ordinated by pianist Terence Collie and vocalist Janet McCunn, both of whom have become great friends of Brecon Jazz Club and Festival.

The Andalusian born pianist Galiardo spent time in the US studying at the famous Berklee College of Music. It was there that he met his wife, the Japanese pianist and composer Atsuko Shimada, who has also visited and played at Brecon on numerous occasions. Reviews of these performances can be found elsewhere on The Jazzmann.

On record Galiardo made his début as a leader in 2012 with his eponymous release on the New Steps record label. The pianist leads a quintet featuring the great Jerry Bergonzi on tenor saxophone plus Joe Magnarelli on trumpet, Dave Santoro on bass and Andrea Michelutti at the drums. The programme includes five Galiardo originals plus four arrangements of well known jazz standards by composers such as Cole Porter and Antonio Carlos Jobim.  There’s nothing radical about the album but it’s a classy set of mainstream jazz, immaculately recorded and flawlessly played. My full review of the album can be read here;
http://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/juan-galiardo/

Galiardo has also recorded regularly as a sideman, his credits including several albums with Arturo Serra. Galiardo’s website lists his full discography. Please visit http://www.juangaliardomusic.com

Tonight’s performance saw Galiardo re-united with bassist Aidan Thorne, but it was the first time that he had played with drummer Patrick Barrett-Donlon. In addition to leading his own groups Barrett-Donlon is perhaps best known as a member of pianist and composer Eddie Gripper’s trio.

Tonight’s programme, performed over the course of two engaging sets, was largely standards based but did find room for a couple of excellent Galiardo originals. Several of the items had been performed by Galiardo with different accompanists at previous Brecon shows but Thorne and Barrett-Donlon certainly put their own stamp on them during the course of a performance that became more and more daring as the evening progressed, with the trio gradually establishing their own unique rapport.

During the course of the introductions Lynne Gornall of Brecon Jazz paid tribute to the late Celia Mur, who died in 2019. In 2020 Lynne penned a tribute to Celia which was first published in the Brecon & Radnor Express and later reproduced on The Jazzmann. It can be read here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/a-tribute-to-celia-murjazz-flamenco-singer-from-spain—by-lynne-gornall-of-brecon-jazz

After the welcome and introductions, which were handled in Welsh by Ros,  the music began with with “If I Were A Bell”, ushered in by Galiardo’s chiming piano motif, this acting as the springboard for his first solo of the night on The Muse’s upright acoustic piano, which was donated to Brecon Jazz Club by Lynne’s late Aunt May. Thorne, a masterful bass soloist, followed. Barrett-Donlon gravitated between brushes and sticks as the impetus and intensity of the music required and was featured in a series of lively drum breaks as the music built towards a powerful finish.

Galiardo’s rapport with Thorne was particularly apparent on the trio’s version of Herbie Hancock’s composition “Driftin’”, which saw the bassist taking the first solo, this followed by a highly percussive piano solo from the leader and a neatly constructed drum feature from Barrett-Donlon.

Unaccompanied piano, subsequently joined by double bass and brushed drums, introduced the jazz standard “Embraceable You”.  Barrett-Donlon again moved between brushes and sticks as the music required, taking up the latter for a Galiardo piano solo that incorporated a series of flamboyant classical style flourishes. Brushes were deployed to accompany a typically fluent and dexterous bass solo from Thorne, and also for a series of exchanges with Galiardo.

Galiardo’s own composition “Brecon Beacons” always gets an airing during his visits to the UK. An impressionistic collective introduction was notable for Barrett-Donlon’s exquisite cymbal colourations. Gentle and lyrical at times,  but more forceful at others, the piece exhibited a shrewd and skilled command of dynamics and seemed to capture the capricious moods of the mountains themselves. Fluent and imaginative solos came from Thorne on double bass and the leader at the piano.

Although I’d seen him play it in this style before Galiardo’s unusual slowed down arrangement of Ray Noble’s “Cherokee” still came as a delightful surprise. Normally a bebop war horse that gets played at 100 mph Galiardo’s interpretation of the tune recasts it as a gentle ballad featuring the sounds of melodic double bass and brushed drums, but with the leader’s piano still bringing subtle blues intonations to the music.

The final number of the first set was an up-tempo arrangement of Cole Porter’s “Just One Of Those Things” with Galiardo’s feverish piano solo fuelled by Thorne’s propulsive bass lines and Barrett-Donlon’s crisp drumming. Thorne and Barrett-Donlon also enjoyed their own features as the first half drew to a barnstorming conclusion, the trio earning themselves a great reception from an enthusiastic and supportive audience at The Muse.

Set two began in familiar territory with an arrangement of the jazz standard “Everything I Love” with solos from Galiardo and Thorne plus a series of exchanges between Galiardo and Barrett-Donlon.

So far, so predictable, but next Galiardo upped the ante with a stunning McCoy Tyner inspired arrangement of the Wayne Shorter composition “Black Nile” from Shorter’s 1964 Blue Note album “Night Dreamer”, on which Tyner played. A rumbling and dramatic unaccompanied piano intro, to which bass and drums were subsequently added, gave way to a tumultuous, but sometimes playful,  solo from Galiardo that was positively ‘Tyner-esque’. Thorne and Barrett-Donlon responded to the challenges laid down with impressive features of their own. Terrific stuff, and definitely one of the highlights of the evening for me.

“For All We Know” was delivered as a kind of abstract ballad with Galiardo’s solo followed by a drum feature from Barrett-Donlon, who again switched between brushes and sticks.

Galiardo’s original “Uncle Joe” was a dedication to his uncle Jose, the man who introduced the young Galiardo to jazz through his large collection of jazz recordings.  Galiardo’s tune had a strong blues and gospel flavour and sounded like an Iberian cousin to Cannonball Adderley’s “Work Song” or Bobby Timmons’ “Moanin’”.
Solos came from the composer on piano and Thorne on double bass.

Next up was a tune played in response to a request from BJC organisers Lynne Gornall and Roger Cannon. This was an instrumental version of the song “Centre Piece”, written by trumpeter Harry Edison and vocalist / lyricist Jon Hendricks. Following on neatly from Galiardo’s own piece the tune was delivered in the same blues / gospel style and incorporated solos from both Galiardo and Thorne.

The final piece of the evening, effectively performed as an encore, was a jazz arrangement of the Antonio Carlos Jobim song “Triste” that included features for all three musicians.

Once again this second set received a great ovation from the crowd at The Muse. Galiardo is a much loved figure with Brecon audiences and tonight’s show strengthened that bond. It was a performance that got better and better as the evening progressed and the musicians became increasingly familiar with, and comfortable with, one another’s playing. Bassist Thorne seems to have a happy knack of bringing out the best in the musicians that he accompanies, his own adventurous approach with its commitment to improvisation seems to communicate itself to others and Galiardo was in increasingly inspired form here. Barrett-Donlon seems to fit in seamlessly with whatever musical context he finds himself in and he made a superb contribution here. An excellent start to Brecon Jazz Club’s 2025/26 season.

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