Pierre Favre & Sergio Armaroli, Andrea Centazzo, Francesca Gemmo: The Art Of Sound(s)

It would not be prudent to overlook history when considering the music created by the improvising artists of The Art of Sound(s). As William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest: "By that destiny to perform an act / Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge." In other words, this 2024 recording could not exist without the accumulated experiences and creative legacies of its four musicians.

At the center stands Swiss drummer Pierre Favre, a veteran of jazz and improvised music whose journey mirrors that of many European pioneers. Like Peter Brötzmann, Favre began in Early Jazz before embracing free improvisation, working with figures such as Peter Kowald, Irene Schweizer, Paul Motian, Albert Mangelsdorff and Joe McPhee. His exploration of percussion as a language rather than a mere timekeeping device profoundly influenced Italian drummer Andrea Centazzo, who became both collaborator and disciple. The two performed and recorded together extensively, with Favre's mentorship helping shape Centazzo's expansive musical vision.

Centazzo, in turn, became a key figure in the New York Downtown scene, recording with Steve Lacy, Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill and John Zorn, and founding the groundbreaking Ictus Records label. He later mentored Italian percussionist and vibraphonist Sergio Armaroli, a versatile artist equally at home in avant-garde and chamber settings. Armaroli's creative partnership with pianist Francesca Gemmo—both interpreters of John Cage's musical philosophy—brings an additional layer of conceptual depth to this project.

In that sense, this recording feels not accidental but inevitable—a convergence of generations linked by curiosity, mentorship and a shared pursuit of sonic truth.

The album's eight improvised tracks, divided into "Movements," unfold with organic precision. Each one feels both spontaneous and deliberate, oscillating between chamber-like restraint and the wild freedom of improvisation. The quartet blends classical poise with minimalist abstraction, as though reciting poetry in a language that is simultaneously familiar and strange.

Gemmo reminds us that the piano is, at its core, a percussion instrument—her hammers echoing the mallets of Armaroli's vibraphone. Both musicians blur the boundary between rhythm and harmony, while Favre and Centazzo extend the very notion of what percussion can be: color, space, resonance and breath. Together, the four create a sound world where pulse dissolves into texture, and texture becomes time.

The Art of Sound(s) is more than a meeting—it is a dialogue across generations, a living testament to how musical lineage and invention continually reshape each other. What's past is indeed prologue, and in this music, the future speaks fluently through the echoes of history.

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