Jazz Articles

Bob Gluck & Tani Tabbal: At This Time: Duets

by Karl Ackermann
November 6, 2017

Bob Gluck is a gifted composer of electronic and acoustic music, as well as an educator and writer. As a pianist/keyboardist he has offered innovative and intensely creative modern jazz, finding inspiration in the familiar and the obscure. He has collaborated with Michael Bisio, Jane Ira Bloom, Ken Filiano, and many other top-tier artists. With Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson and Christopher Dean Sullivan he gave us Infinite Spirit -Revisiting Music of the Mwandishi Band (Self Produced, 2016), a companion recording ...

Confusion Bleue: East Side Banquet

by Glenn Astarita
May 17, 2013

Luminously recorded at East Side Studio in New York City, the superfine Confusion Bleue band reemerges with a sterling exposition, centered upon its democratic, but largely cohesive free-form manifesto. The musicians present a resonating group-centric sound, aided by Lee Pembleton's exquisite audio-engineering via a consortium of gusty improvisations and swirling breakouts. With rapidly-moving pulses, keyboardist Nobu Stowe often steers or provokes the variable theme-building components, transferring to a rather inspiring group dynamic. “Movement III" is one of seven ...

DEPARTED ANGELS

by Jerry D'Souza
August 7, 2009

Intuition plays the dominant role in the interaction between percussionist Andrea Centazzo and seven guitar improvisers on this set of collaborations recorded over a wide span of time. Centazzo plays in duo and trio settings, occasionally adding another voice. What transpires is an explosion of processes that take the art of invention to a new high. Centazzo has been an active musician and composer for over 25 years, covering a wide and impressive range of styles including opera, ...

Andrea Centazzo: West Coast Trio

by Jerry D'Souza
June 21, 2008

A man of many talents, Andrea Centazzo is a composer at home with classical, jazz and experimental music. As a musician, he plays percussion and keyboards, and is not immune to sampling to add to the impact.

Centazzo's music breathes and reverberates from the input of his band. He calls for an intuitive response to develop the theme and both Kai Kurosawa (guitar) and Motoka Honda (piano) help realize the depth and tangibility of his compositions. ...

Guido Mazzon Sextet: Flights Of Fancy

by Nic Jones
December 2, 2007

Perhaps inevitably, this one's something of an epitaph for trombonist Paul Rutherford, whose death earlier this year robbed the improvised music fraternity of one of its most vigorous advocates.

Recorded in 1993 , this is a session that documents him in customary peerless form in the company of an Italian group alive to the possibilities inherent in trumpeter Guido Mazzon's wide-open music. The latter's avoidance of the obvious, which in this case would amount on one hand to minimal lines ...

Kondo / Chadbourne / Centazzo: The Warriors

by Nic Jones
November 18, 2007

The title of this one's misleading, as this is music made by unconditional collaborationists as opposed to anyone of a more aggressive disposition. The results of their collaboration embodies that old saying about the meeting of minds, and the results are the outcome of a highly refined group sensibility that was evidently defined by the trio's experience as a working group.

With the exception of “The Warriors #8," no individual track breaches the ten minute mark, and in a sense ...

ROVA Saxophone Quartet and Andrea Centazzo: The Bay

by Jerry D'Souza
August 24, 2007

Ictus Records was co-founded by percussionist Andrea Centazzo with Carla Lugli in the late 1970s. The focus was on improvised music, contemporary styling and avant-garde jazz. Centazzo and Lugli ran the label until 1984 when the financial burden became too heavy to carry on. During that time, Ictus had a strong catalog with recordings of Centazzo, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Gianluigi Trovesi and ROVA. Saxophone Quartet among others.

Ictus was resurrected after a hiatus of thirty years. Several ...

Andrea Centazzo: The Heart of Wax

by John Barron
August 22, 2007

In 2001, Italian composer/percussionist Andrea Centazzo assembled a first-rate ensemble of strings, winds, keyboards and percussion to record his adventurous ballet suite, The Heart of Wax. The music, commissioned by the arts council of the municipality of Cento, was written for a forgotten libretto by Italian artist Alberto Martini (1876-1954). Newly edited and re-mastered for Centazzo's own Ictus Records, The Heart of Wax casts the Italian free-jazz pioneer in the role of composer/conductor, demonstrating superlative mastery of orchestration. ...

Andrea Centazzo, Perry Robinson, Nobu Stowe: The Soul in the Mist

by John Barron
August 17, 2007

On The Soul in the Mist, legendary composer/percussionist Andrea Centazzo leads a dazzling set of introspective, communal improvisation with the help of renowned clarinetist Perry Robinson and pianist Nobu Stowe. The musical explorations on this live recording, taken from two east coast concerts in November of 2006, have a meditative, trance-like quality, spacious and hauntingly patient.

For the most part, Centazzo defines the mood of each selection with definitive percussion introductions. However, the minimalist nature to his compositions allows each ...

Andrea Centazzo: The Soul in the Mist

by Budd Kopman
August 16, 2007

The music from Soul in the Mist was taken from two live performances towards the end of 2006. Having heard most of this music performed at the Rubin Museum as part of its Harlem in the Himalayas program, I can say that the quality of the earlier performances and their recording was very high indeed.

Andrea Centazzo is an outstanding percussionist, both naturally and electronically processed. Thirty years ago, his independent label, Ictus Records, was in the forefront of the ...