Prologue:

I had heard Italian drummer/composer Andrea Centazzo's music off and on during the 1970s when he was busy traveling all around the United States, hooking up with various musicians on the improv scene. He played all types of concerts, managing to record many of them for release on his own ICTUS record label. Then he dropped out of sight for years.

PASIC 2002 brought about a rare solo percussion performance by Centazzo and I just had to be there. What can I say? Finally I was able to meet the man who had such a big influence on my own performing and composing styles. He had his large drum set up, multiple Gongs, electronics, and video projections. The sound check was fascinating and I watched in wonder, barely able to contain my excitement. Then the time came and the performance started. He set off samples in time to the video projection behind him and created tribal drum beats that were earthy and organic. His Gong melodies sung out across the room until everything ground to a complete halt.

Something in the sound system was amiss and Centazzo could not hear the backing samples. A few minutes were taken to find the source of the problem and restart the performance, but things still didn't work right. After a flawless soundcheck, Centazzo stood center stage, perplexed and confused. This was to be his comeback performance to actively playing percussion once again. And PASIC was an audience of drummers-peers of his. This was not the place to have things fall apart. But fall apart they did, and a disappointed Centazzo apologized to the waiting audience for things not working right.

Despite all this, I was able to talk to Andrea afterwards and found him to be cordial and friendly. We had much in common musically and hit it off right away. Afterwards, I maintained contact with him and we have continued to correspond and exchange musical ideas. I am pleased to call him my friend. And out of this friendship I wanted to help expose him to a wider audience. So I approached MODERN DRUMMER magazine about writing a feature on Centazzo. With a bit of persistence on my part, they finally agreed and the article was featured in the July, 2004 issue.

But this was not the whole interview. Much like a movie, shot with hours and hours of film, my interview had to be edited down to a manageable form. I was only able to use about 2,800 words out of some 8,000 from our long conversation. I'm pleased to say that the interview here takes the MODERN DRUMMER feature and restores much of the left out conversation. It is the director's cut in a way. So for the 1st time I present to you the complete:

Andrea Centazzo: Percussion Renaissance Man

Text - Michael Bettine

Top Photo courtesy Andrea Centazzo, all other photos - © Crystal Trowbridge/CGT Photography 

Legendary Italian drummer Andrea Centazzo has seen his career move in many different directions, sometimes simultaneously. He has worked as a composer, film maker, video artist, director, writer, and instrument designer.

Along with performing, Centazzo has managed to get advanced degrees in both law and music.

Strange enough, I have a degree in music paleology, which is the study of the old music writing, back to the middle ages, to the Gregorian chant. There's been a crazy musicology study at the university. I took paleology because at that time it was the only branch established in the Italian university. Really, I didn't give a shit to middle age music! So I'd been studying this middle age music, but at the same time with the music history professor, we decided to do my final dissertation on the music of Edgar Varése. So basically I have a Ph.D. in music paleology with a dissertation on Edgar Varése's percussion music. That is totally crazy because it has nothing to do with paleology!

As an inquisitive young drummer, his interest in ethnic music had him looking for new sounds. He ended up forming a relationship with UFIP, the Italian Cymbal company.

That was basically at the beginning of my career, about 1974. At that time I was just a young drummer trying to make it, you know? I was just playing drums by myself and studying when I found an ad in a jazz magazine in Italy announcing in 1970 a summer jazz clinic in Switzerland. So I went there and met Pierre Favre-I fell in love, artistically speaking, with Pierre. And in 1972 I decided to go study in Bern, Switzerland at the jazz school where he was teaching. Then we became good friends and I decided to take private lessons. I have to say, he never showed me something technical. It was totally philosophical teaching. He was playing all those African music LPs and showing me gongs, playing for me different music, explaining his own concepts.

So when I got my first important professional job as a musician in 1973, the drummer for the George Gasolini Quartet, it was the most important jazz band in Italy at the time, I approached UFIP saying, 'Hey, I'm a drummer playing drum set, but I'd like to get into percussion, melodic percussion more. Can you help me out?' And they said, 'Sure. Come on down.' They're very nice people-two people with a small workshop. So I went there and said, 'You don't have any percussion here. We should start to make some prototypes. They said, "Yeah, why not."

Andrea helped design various gongs, bells, and percussion sounds. But out of this collaboration, his most memorable invention has been the Icebell.

I worked for like a year with them and tried to imitate some of the ethnic instruments, and tried to make some new instruments-cutting cymbals or working with metal sheets. You know, when you have a workshop with people that know how to hammer cymbals, or to cut out the metal, it's kind of easy and exciting. W had tons of prototypes. Finally in 1975 we went to the Frankfurt [Germany] Messe instrument fair, which is a kind of European NAMM. We had what we called the Ictus 75 percussion instrument series. We had 5 or 6 major prototypes that I invented, like the Icebell. Every Icebell sounds different-there are none that will sound the same. When they make them as a fusion (casting), then polish them, they can't calculate how much metal they will take off because they are polished by hand. So every piece is a single piece. I have a few Icebells in my collection that are absolutely incredible sounds. So we did the icebell, we did Sheng and Lokole-different kind of bronze plates. We did the tubophone, which is a square tube, open on one side to make a kind of metallic noise. We did a lot of stuff. Like the trash set that Paiste is selling now, I made 25 years ago.

The only problem with UFIP was they didn't have the strength to keep going and get the patents. They didn't have enough money to protect my work. They didn't have the money to protect themselves. For instance, I went to New York with a prototype and stayed for a week at the house of (LP founder) Martin Cohen. At the time he was interested to import with LP the entire production. But he was offering less money than was the original cost for us. So we couldn't make it. So finally, being totally unprotected, he just took my prototypes and made them with brass. He started to sell the Icebell under the LP name brand for a quarter of the price we were selling the original bronze Icebell. After a while, Zildjian also started to copy it. And everybody was fucked up. The Icebell has been copied by everybody in the world.

So finally in 1984 Paiste approached me saying, 'Would you like to come over and work with us?' I said, 'Yeah, sure. Why not?' I didn't make any money out of the UFIP prototypes and also didn't get enough support when I was traveling and doing concerts. They didn't pay me to do clinics. In the beginning, 85-87, I got paid by Paiste to do clinics around Europe and did a lot of work for them. We originally started to work on a few prototypes, but then the problem was Paiste didn't want to put out prototypes that they couldn't sell, because their market is the mass market. So they didn't put out the few prototypes I designed for them. So we decided to just go with an endorsement.

So that's the story about UFIP. Lately I've been talking to them quite a lot because they asked me if I'd like to play their own instruments. I said, "I'm sorry, but I'm really a faithful guy and I'm playing Paiste. I can't come back to you. Unless you don't offer me something you can't." Because they are not distributed in the States. They are not distributed in Japan, They are not distributed period. They are very concentrated in the Italian market, French market, and a few importers around Europe. They are making very good instruments. I don't know if you played the last cymbals they made a couple of years ago, they are great. They are just like a diamond in the mine, if you don't have anybody getting the diamond out of the mine, nobody can look at it. To make nice cymbals and keep them in Pistoia [Italy] where they have the factory, doesn't make any sense. They are nice people anyway and I keep in touch with them lately, also because they are making a DVD on the UFIP history.

All the UFIP instruments I still have sound great. First of all, for a traveling musician, they are too heavy! That's the main point. I have an entire set of Ogororo, those little bronze plates. Originally I was using those instead of the Paiste [tuned] gong octave. Lets say the gongs weigh a few pounds, the Ogororo weigh like thirty pounds. It's too heavy because it's full bronze. They don't work with sheet metal like Paiste. So everything is very good, but very heavy. That's something that also helped me decide to move to Paiste.

More than anything else I've been very lucky to be able to waste tons of bronze with UFIP. (laughs) That's the truth. When you are experimenting it's kind of a blindfold test, "Let's see what will happen if we put more copper in." You know, we did some prototypes with silver, a small percentage of silver. I still have a cymbal I made that sounds just incredible. I can tell it's a nice cymbal sound. It's like very high harmonics in the sound. Doing this with silver emphasized the high end of the sound. So it's not usable for normal cymbal playing, like crashes or rides. But the prototype sound incredible, very interesting. You know, I got the opportunity to experiment without anybody saying, "Hey! No, the copper is too expensive," or "the tin is too much." And it was easy working everyday with just a couple of people hammering or making a prototype. But finally we just picked the best sound. It's been very exciting years, also because we were, both myself and the UFIP owner, very young and very open. It was the right collaboration at the right time.

As part of his explorations in the 1970s, he formed his own record label, Ictus, to document his own work and the burgeoning Italian improvised jazz scene. His first release, Shock, a duo with Italian saxophonist Gianluigu Trovesi, is hailed as one of the most important Italian jazz recordings of all time. This ground breaking work put the young Italians in the same league as their European and American contemporaries. Subsequent releases saw Centazzo collaborating with musicians like saxophonists Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, and Vinnie Golia; guitarist Derek Bailey, and drummers Pierre Favre and Alex Cline. As he was able to further his percussive vision by playing an expanded drum setup of gongs, cymbals, and sounds, this inspired him to compose more and work in films.

My solo percussion CD, Visions, has the compositions Tiare I-IV. Tiare means 'homeland' in Friulian, the dialect of the part of Italy I come from. Those compositions were what I was playing in concert. So I said, "I'm going to buy a camera and start shooting around, and I'm going to put together a video in order to show people that percussion instruments are no less important than any other kind of instrument. They can really be the core of a soundtrack." So I did this 38 minute video titled Tiare, started to send it around to festivals and contact journalists about that. Believe it or not, in a two year period, 1985-86, that video won all the international video festivals!"

But success can sometimes be a double-edged sword.

It's been a contradiction, because people started to call me to direct videos! (laughs) "No, I want to do soundtracks!" I wanted to work more with percussion, and now I started to work less!

I have to say that I was surviving in 1986-89, making nice money doing videos. Of course I was doing videos and putting my music [on them], but mainly people were asking me to do videos. So in 1989, I decided to stop, because I couldn't go on with this ambiguity of being a director or being a composer. And just lately I found a way to put together live music and live projections. Because those videos were just to be seen on TV. But I very much like filming. As a matter of fact, I just made a new commentary on Balinese music, and it's just ready now. Also, the entire Sacred Shadows television show is directed by me. I've always been going back and forth with video and music, but I have to say everything started with the frustration that no one would accept movie soundtracks just made of percussion.

The bet was, "Let's see if I can do it." And I did. I don't know if it was a mistake or not as it even more confuses what I am. I wanted to work more and I started to work less! (laughs) I'm not complaining about my career, but it's always been a struggle to keep going. I'm also such a curious person and jumping from one to the other side of art. Instead, a guy like Tony Oxley has been a genius of drums and very precisely focused on drums.

I was drumming, I was composing, I was filming, writing, you know? In a century like the 20th, and the 21st now, that's not the right attitude. That is a more renaissance attitude. It's like Leonardo DaVinci, who was painting at the same time he was doing military architecture design, he was also doing anatomy, writing poems...that's a really different attitude. I'm probably in the wrong century. (laughs)

The desire to work more on composition and film soundtracks naturally brought him to the movie capital of the world, Hollywood.

This reconnection with the percussion industry inspired him to take up drumming again and combine it with both his composing and film work. In the nineties, he had been creating large scale works that combined different music and instruments. Among these are a series of multi-media operas, TINA (based on the life of photographer, artist and revolutionary Tina Modotti), SIMULTAS, and MEMENTO. All three use video images extensively. These lead to Sacred Shadows.

Finally, I found the money to do a project with Balinese musicians and I was very, very happy. Not only musically, but personally, because it was the first time, after years of frustration in working with mainly classical musicians, I got people playing just for the joy of playing. Those guys are incredible.

You say, "Let's rehearse tomorrow at nine o'clock," and somebody's coming at nine, somebody's coming at 11. (laughs) It's very much timing like that in Bali. So you start the rehearsal and go for two hours, and then you say, "Hey, let's take a break." "OH no no no. Let's go for another hour. We are enjoying very much." So another hour and, "Now let's take a break. Somebody's coming with coffee." In the meantime, for them, to take a break is just to move from a keyboard to a drum and vice versa, you know? They keep on playing. At the end of the day I had a headache because they were playing continuously. But it's so beautiful, that concept you know.

We had a rehearsal for ten days and at the end they were taking me to the airport and said, "We'd just like to know if there's some money?" I said, "Sure, there's some money." But nobody was just paying attention [to that], because socially, they are professional musicians in the village, but they have a kind of community support. The society's still based on solidarity that here in the West we forgot about 200 years ago. So if in the village the musician can make some money playing, they play for the festivals, ceremonies. But if they can't, the village provides support to them. It's beautiful.

Sacred Shadows features Andrea on drums and gongs, a Balinese Gamelan ensemble, an ensemble with keyboards and horns, a choir, narrators and video images, as well as dancers.

When I first decided to do it, I immediately realized that the Gamelan players don't read music. So I went to Bali and watched some rehearsals playing their own music. I recorded what they did, took the tape and transferred it into a computer. I sliced the single patterns, even the single notes, and reconstructed my music with that. I had a sampled a keyboard or gong sound, and then put the sample on my composition. So from the original Gamelan sampling, I completely reconstructed a new kind of music. Then on top I put all the western instrument parts and recorded a sequence with the entire music composition.

I then went back to Bali, playing the Balinese guys just their own parts, one by one. In the beginning it was a bit confusing for them. They told me it was like listening to somebody speak Balinese words with Arabian grammar. They don't work with measures, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, as we work. They use the same concept as the [Indian] ragas-long phrasing. And everything is commanded by the gong sound. So basically, they started to rehearse, memorizing their own patterns. They are just unbelievable to watch, because they can easily remember two hours of music. As soon as they got the new Gamelan composition in mind, I started to rehearse with the computer, having them play with the click, and slowly putting a new Western instrument on the top each time, just to not confuse them too much.

You know how difficult it is for a Western drummer to get accustomed to playing with a click? On the first playback that I did, bang, immediately they were on the click! It was amazing, like they had played with a click all their lives. And by slowly adding all the other instruments, they didn't lose the basic Gamelan concept. The real big problem was since they don't count, each time they made a mistake, we had to go back to the beginning! (laughs) You can tell them, "OK guys, lets go from measure 110," and they don't know what that means. So when they made a mistake, the Italian musicians didn't have a problem. I could just scream, "Hey, we are at measure 202," and they immediately go and read measure 202. Instead, if they were wrong, they got completely lost. When we had rehearsals in Italy, we had to divide a composition into three sections, about three or four minutes every section, so at least we had a point to go back to.

But I have to say, they were so good, with such a great memory, that they didn't have problems. It was really appealing, because they were keeping their own language and we were keeping our language, but we found a common ground to work together. Also, myself playing with the drummers-you can imagine how they play, they have such a way to put accents, that you never know where the down beat is. The only way to get the down beat is the gong who's playing tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk. So, to be together with the gong player, on my left I had a cowbell instead of the hi-hat, imitating the sound they use to make the down beat. And I'd been playing the bell in unison with the guy, so we got the reference point, where I was or where they were, little tricks, you know. It's been working very well. I was the one carrying the weight of the Balinese mistakes, (laughs) Western mistakes.

On the top we had a choir and they were really the pain in the ass. They were more used to, not classic music, because usually they sing also Gospel, this kind of music, but they were certainly not used to all those percussion layers. So I had to have a conductor come to conduct the choir. I was basically communicating with the conductor who was conducting the choir. Otherwise, the twelve people of the choir couldn't follow me, because of course, I was playing and not conducting. So I needed somebody showing exactly where the downbeat was.

So basically I keep going with this mixture [of music]. I really like it. I'm going back to Bali for one month and I have a book that I'm writing. I would love to stay there because I found out there are many more types of Gamelan music. There is a village where they have just bamboo Gamelan. Another village where they have iron instruments instead of bronze. And then I'd like to go to Java to compare, because Balinese Gamelan is, let's say, much more swinging, and the Javanese is much more meditative, slow-even the dance, it's like hypnosis. It's really interesting. That's the next step. I also want to do a recording and see if I can get more composing ideas out of it. So that's the ethnic music chapter in my life.

With the Gamelan players, the orchestra, the singers, and the whole video set up, Sacred Shadows is a major undertaking.

The basic budget for that project was $70,000. It's been really, really tight. I have to say I've been working for six months and finally what I get is some thousand dollars, because the expenses were just huge. I did a making of video for Italian TV. It starts from New York in the '70s, goes to Bali, where I'd been shooting and recording all those ceremonies of the theater pieces, then to the show in Italy.

So, I had to find the company and deal with them. Basically every night I've been spending seven or eight thousand dollars just to get the projections on the wall of the square. So it really was the most expensive part of the project. And then the expenses to bring the Gamelan with all the instruments-that's why the project is really difficult to put on. In the very end of a very nice show, the cheapest part was the musicians. (laughs) Yeah, it's true. We were thirty persons. You start to pay thirty persons, hotels, and meals for a week. And then you pay ten persons transportation from Bali to Italy. It's always $1,200 per ticket. And when you pay a little fee, like $50 or $100 for musicians, you are already fucked up. No way.

As a matter of fact, I've been trying to put a project on again in France. I've been inquiring and everybody's excited, "Oh great, great." But then when we go and talk about money, everybody said it's too much. Also, because we got a grant to do that. If you don't get a grant, even if you make the people pay, you know, even if you have 2,000 people in a place watching it, it's not enough to pay the production. Unless you don't have a producer and can organize a tour, you can probably make money. I mean, terms like agent, producer, manager, have been in my life like, terms that I could never use properly. (laughs) Gosh, I never found somebody working for me. I had to do everything. When we put on the show last year, at the very end I turned to the guy who was paying the grant, "Hey, if you have a broom I can even sweep the stage, because at this point you are asking me everything. So why not cleaning, you know?" So it was a really, really hard job to do it, but it worked for me spiritually. It was such a rewarding situation and I have to say the audience loved it.

I think the CD came out quite well, and it's just a rough mix. I'm planning to redo some keyboards, because we got a problem, and I think both keyboards cam out mono instead of stereo. So the stereo image is kind of narrow and if I can redo some keyboard tracks, it can be more spatial in sound. Still, more than anything else I'm amazed by the quality of the playing. That has been the first time we played together and it sounds just impeccable, just perfect. Those guys were really, really into it. I love it.

Another project is Ancient Future. This solo performance combines video images and electronic percussion triggering samples with his own live drumming.

That comes from several different experiences. In all the solo work that I did in the past, I've been using ethnic instruments, mixing up stuff, but I never really plunged into such an ethnic feel like Ancient Future. First of all, the influence of the Balinese music and the experience with the Balinese musicians really put me in a different direction. So the first section of the concert, which is about twenty minutes, is all based on Balinese chanting, the Balinese patterns, and the pentatonic system. It's a really strong influence. And then I've been using more ethnic samples, like Arabian, or from Madagascar-singers and songs. So as a solo player, it's really a turning point for me. It's kind of new compared to the old improvised solos that I was doing, or the contemporary music where I was doing part of my own improv, or compositions like John Cage or Steve Reich-this kind of music. Also, there's a good combination between my improvisation work, my composition, and generally speaking, also the multi-media aspect. It works very well, fortunately.

Ancient Future is an amazing sensory experience of sight and sound. The combination of video and music creates a more dramatic concert experience that people can relate to and enjoy.

I have to say you are right, the people just love it. They went crazy. Everything is really something that could be enjoyable for somebody who is not accustomed to a solo percussion concert. There's a good combination between my improvisation work, my composition, and also the multi-media aspect. Fortunately, it works very well.

Nobody in the concert organizer world really understands. As always in this business, I think the problem is exposure. If I could get a television spot, or if I could make a major festival appearance, something that could be seen by people, journalist, probably that could be the beginning of a new story. Until, I'm running around sending out cassettes to organizers, I'm asking for grants, and there's no where I can go because it's always the same problems. I'm sure I could play at the Playboy Jazz Festival and then have an article in DownBeat, or a Modern Drummer cover, then you can play that forever, you know? It's too bad because now I have DW and Vic Firth, I have Remo and Paiste on my side. So if I could have the opportunity to get into something, they could also help me to promote it. Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

But there is a frustration with getting promoters interested in presenting something different.

I'm trying to bring the show around but it's difficult, I have to say sincerely. I'm selling the show for $2,000, all included. Including video projector, sound engineer, PA, etc.....everything! Even in Italy, or Europe, it's difficult to place it, you know? Because it seems that $2,000 for a show like that is too much. When they pay $40,000 for a rock group making a concert, that is really a shame, you know? That's how it goes because less money is around and I think they concentrate on pleasing the audience with commercial product. When you do something that is not really commercial, it's really cultural and stays in between genres, like what I do, they don't care. If you have a jazz trio you can probably play much more than if you play solo percussion.

The Ancient Future video is enjoyable just to watch

I didn't have many of my instruments there. Most were provided by Paiste-the cymbals & gongs- the drumset also, I was expecting another drumset, and at the very last minute I was expecting from KAT the pad system with the brain, and finally, I found that their system is totally different from Roland's. So one hour before the beginning, I had to go to Roland and say, "Please, give me something that could be comparable to what I have, a PPS7 I think is the brain I was using." Because all the samples were distributing in a different way on the pads with the KAT system. I was so stressed until the very beginning of the show, then the PA started to get that sound and I decided to give up. So I think that if you just have a small PA instead, a small mixing board, and everything is just what you need, the concert can be very small.

PASIC is at least good exposure and can present some opportunities for the future.

After PASIC I got a lot of invitations to go around and do master classes at Universities. But people are saying there's no money. They're offering $200 to go to Miami to do a master class-it doesn't make any sense. They say, "It's just an hour." Yes, sure, perfect, if you live in Miami. But to go from L.A.... Michael Rosen at Oberlin College wrote me. He said they have a budget of like $600-1,000 for the whole year. So he can't invite anybody from outside the college. And the situation seems to be getting worse with all the military expenses.

One of Andrea's more interesting collaborations came about in the summer of 2003. He accompanied author Jeffrey Eugenides, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Middlesex, at the Literature Festival in Rome.

Middlesex is a great book. Now he's living in Germany. He moved to Germany from Detroit. Jeffrey Eugenides is from a Greek family and the book is really interesting. It's about a girl who is an hermaphrodite, so the story is really humorous, this girl narrating all the problems to being half a woman, half a man. It's going back to the Delphi Oracle that we know was an hermaphrodite, because in the Greek world, like in many, many different cultures, they were considered kind of gods.

The location where we did the performance was just astonishing. It was in the middle of Rome, in front of the Colosseum. We were performing with all the lighting of the Colosseum perfectly done and had 2,700 people watching the performance, because it was at a literature festival. So the people were really interested in going to see the performance. We had two big screens. One was with my own videos, and the other so the audience could see me from the back. A cameraman was shooting my hands while I was playing. When Jeffrey was reading the book-he was reading in English-one screen had the translation and the other had images of us performing.

Then at the end I did the three pieces from Ancient Futures myself. The one with the Arabian singer, the one with the Los Angeles skyscrapers in black and white, and the American Indian singing. The people just loved it, you know? I had 2,700 people totally blown away by a percussion concert. That shows that most of the time the organizers are much more stupid than the audience. Because the organizer thinks, "No, no, no, no! That is too difficult for the audience." And they are more afraid to listen to something new than anybody in the audience. So it was a really, really great night. The combination between Jeffrey and myself worked very well.

Also, the 20 minute solo I did on the end. And there we got perfect PA, perfect screen-we had two big screens. One screen was with my own videos, and the other had a TV crew and a director shooting, so the audience could also see me from the back. A cameraman came over, shooting my hands while I was playing. When he was reading the book-he was reading in English-one screen had the translation and the other had images of us performing. It was a great night. When the PA works, when the projection works, everything else comes very easily. (laughs) I think that is a statement I will put on my grave. "I saw more concerts ruined in my life by bad engineers than bad musicians." That's going to be my grave epitaph.

It's true you know. I've been fucked up by engineers more times than by myself. Even with big orchestras, I never had such a high quantity of bad musicians to ruin the concert. Instead, just one engineer can destroy you. Just think of PASIC. That's the perfect example. You go from the small clubs I was playing jazz in in the seventies, to the big percussion convention in Columbus, and every time you are at the mercy of a guy, and he can decide to just kill you. To kill the performer he needs to just turn the wrong knob, or move the wrong fader. You are fucked up. At least for a musician to ruin a concert he has to be out of inspiration, or not read the music properly, much more.

Always on the move, Andrea recently spent a month back in Bali researching the various Gamelan styles for a book he plans on writing. He has also been asked to do some concerts in the Middle-East, in Dubai in 2004.

Basically I intend to bring Ancient Future, except for the piece with the Arabian singer, because I don't know what she's singing about! (laughs) Or I find somebody who knows Arabic very well. I don't want to be in the same situation as Salmon Rushdie, the English writer. It's very unpredictable with Arabs, especially at this moment. I have to be very careful. I just sampled some phrases from an Arabian music CD. So who knows what she's singing?

What they told me is kind of surprising. They have the best theater, the best projector, the best PA in the middle East. And professionally speaking, we are going to the middle of the desert, but they have much better PA and projector than in Columbus, Ohio! That's for sure. It's justified by the fact that they are very rich from the oil. So they can afford to buy the best equipment. The organizer told me they had Elton John play a concert there three months ago. Every time you think about Arabia, you think about Bedouins, desert, and camels, you know? Instead, those cities are very well organized about everything. I'm planning those for March next year.

The I have a plan to go to Japan. That is just for my own study, because I'd like to go and find out more about Japanese music., traditional Japanese music. This Balinese experience really got me into world cultures more and more. So I like to go and check it out myself, not just listen to the recordings. I want to go next April for two or three weeks in Japan. Then I have some proposals to put Sacred Shadows on again next summer in Italy. But things are difficult financially all over. And if you get something confirmed, you get it confirmed at the last minute.

I'm for sure going to the drum festival in Melbourne, Australia. I've been invited and it's a matter now to see what sponsors I can handle. But I will be there in June. It's regarding solo percussion and I will bring Ancient Future there. I have a project with Aboriginal musicians that I'm working on. The project is based on Bruce Chatwin's books. He was famous in the seventies traveling all around the world. He wrote a few books and died very young. He wrote a book called The Songlines, about the Aboriginal tradition. I've been really fascinated by the book and got a connection and am trying to develop the project with an Aboriginal musician. So who knows? I'm waiting to first go to Melbourne for the festival. I'm planning to stay there, study a little bit, and contact the Aboriginal musicians. They also have a University of Aboriginal Studies. So that's another project I'd like to do. I have many ideas. The only problem is my wallet's empty. (laughs) But I'm OK.

For a long time now it's been nearly impossible to find any recordings of Centazzo and his old ICTUS label. His old LPs fetch big money on Ebay. But after one deal with an Italian label that didn't work out, he has found new interest from another source and will be releasing many of his old titles on the resirected ICTUS imprint.

Epilogue:

In 2007, Andrea Centazzo continues to forge ahead with a vast array of projects. In the past year, his reformed ICTUS label has released an astounding quantity of recordings. All his old LPs have been remastered for CD and many have unissued bonus tracks. He even discovered a wealth of unreleased tapes at his home in Italy. These are finally being released and feature such musicians as Steve Lacy, John Zorn, and other icons of the ''70s improv scene.

And appropriately, his latest multi-media project and CD is called ETERNAL TRAVELER. This show is all about the great Leonardo DaVinci, a fellow Renaissance man. I'd say that Centazzo is in good company.

Links:  Andrea Centazzo, ICTUS Records

© 2004-2007 Michael Bettine