BIOGRAPHY
Antonio Gentile born in Florence on April, 6th, 1961 and starts to
play percussion at the age of 16. He starts to study Afrocuban
percussion together with Karl Potter. He studies music theory
with Bruno Tommaso and starts playing jazz on the 80's. In fact
at the age of 20 he becames a professional musician playing
either jazz or latin music or pop or classical. He meets the
Peruvian singer and percussionist Manuel Bramon and knows
the Afro Peruvian tipical instrument called cajon. At the same
time he studies the Afro-brasilian and the Afro-colombian music
as well the west African drumming with the African master
Assane Adissa. In his twenty-aged career he has played with
artists and bands as Gabriella Ferri, D-note, Vili Lakatos, Mambo
Kids, Urban Funk, Canela. He's founder and co-leader of a lot of
bands like Off Beat, Icnusa, Bluesource, Guarar and World
Duo. He has been playing with some jazz big bands as the CAM
big band director Bruno Tommaso, Enrico Rava, the Barga Jazz
Big Band director Bruno Tommaso, the Great Naco Orchestra
director Massimo Colombo, the Sound Big Band director Franco
Baggiani. He has being teaching for 15 years. He founds the
CSAP (Percussive Art Study Center) and create the study
program called Percussion Master.
INSTRUMENTS
Antonio Gentile plays more than 100 different percussion
instruments. Some of these: cajon peruano, congas, bong,
timbales, berimbao, pandeiro, surdo, ganz, djemb,
doumdoumb, tama, bara, filedoundoun, udu. He creates a
series of selfmade instruments made of re-cycled metal parts.
Some of these are the Gura, the Steelcan and the Junk
caxixi.
