Andrea Centazzo

• video •

• audio •

• links •

• biography •

Italian-American composer, percussionist and multimedia artist Andrea Centazzo has been since 1970 a bold explorer of contemporary art.
In the early 70's he introduced a new concept of percussion playing, migrating from "free jazz" to a new form of improvised music, defining itself and in the same time searching a path to his own new compositional methods.
In the late 70's, Centazzo was one of the founders of the NY Downtown Music Scene with his seminal collaboration with John Zorn, Tom Cora, Eugene Chadbourne, Toshinori Kondo and others, documented in many albums.
In 1976 he established ICTUS Records, one of the first musician operated labels, recording with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Pierre Favre, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Alvin Curran, Albert Mangelsdorff, Don Cherry, Marlyn Crispell, Elliott Sharp and many others.
He left the "improvised music scene" in 1986, starting a video making career and moving shortly after to Los Angeles, dedicating himself to composition and film direction.
Centazzo authored 3 operas, 2 symphonies and almost 500 compositions for all kind of ensembles, plus many award winning video films.
Back to live performing in 1999, he created solo concerts and solo multimedia concerts, playing live in synch with videos that he shoots and edits.
One of his latest project Tides of Gravity has been presented in collaboration with the Nobel Prize for Physics Kip Thorne and produced by LIGO, Caltech and NASA.
Recently toured with Animae Mundi, a new exciting multimedia concert created to draw attention to the climate crisis that the planet is experiencing.
The Library of the University of Bologna at DAMS, just recently dedicated to the composer the Fondo e Archivio Andrea Centazzo where all his works are collected and made available to students and scholars.
Andrea Centazzo was awarded on 2023 in the Town Hall in Udine, Italy, with the presentation of the Seal of the City. The Mayor of the City and the City Council paid homage to the artist, active throughout the world - and in particular in the United States - but born in Udine in 1948. The Seal of the City was awarded for the important research work carried out in the musical and artistic fields and for having contributed to spreading Italian culture and the name of the City abroad.

Extended biography at Centazzo website

Andrea Centazzo on Wikipedia