Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Andrea Centazzo/Steve Lacy: Clangs

223

Andrea Centazzo/Steve Lacy: Clangs

By

View read count
Just as significant as Atavistic's Unheard Music Series and those scholarly boxes from Mosaic Records is the ICTUS reissue series on New Tone. Percussionist Andrea Centazzo and his wife Carla Lugli started their own label. Like Incus from the UK, ICTUS was run by artists for creative artists. Prompted by the war in Bosnia, Centazzo relented to the demands to release these long out-of-print LPs on CD. He donates profits from these record sales to the relief efforts. If that is not enough motivation for discovering or rediscovering what at the time was called 'Spontaneous Creation' or today 'free improvisation,' I'm not sure what is.

Their first project was to document Centazzo's duo performances with saxophonist Steve Lacy. Lacy had, in the early 1960's, begun playing Thelonious Monk's music in a repertory band with Roswell Rudd. Although common today, forming a band to cover Monk was a revolutionary idea 40 years ago. Lacy also had other designs to push onward with free jazz and the avant-garde. His travels to and eventual residence in Europe opened him (and the Europeans improvisers) to new worlds of music. Reading Kevin Whiteheads book New Dutch Swing, highlights Lacy's impact on not only the Dutch, but also Italian, and France scenes.

The live recording re-issue has added two new tracks for the original ICTUS 001 LP. The concert of February 20, 1976 at Udine, Italy is an excellent sound recording. Lacy's patented soprano sound, that crisp distinctive intonation is ever present. Teamed with Centazzo, Lacy leads, follows, but never gets tangled in the mostly minimalist percussion works of Centazzo. Like all free forums there are distracting lulls, dead ends, and wandering. But like abstract expressionist painting, parts work so well together, that the whole is appreciated more than the parts. The silent passages work a subconscious alarm, while the various percussive parts, taps, whistles, shakes, and knocks almost tranquilize the ear. In this digital age, one wonders just how anyone suffered through the snap, crackle, and pops of the LP world. There is nothing to distract you from meditating on the digital pureness of this outing.

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.