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Centazzo:
an outsider by choice and independent by necessity. His multidisciplinary
approach to music has kept him excluded from the mainstream of labelled
genres, but for an artist such as Andrea Centazzo this has been twenty
years of calculated risk, of specific life-style choices, of carrying
out an impossible mission. In the day to day management of his artistic
life rugged track which leads to the summit, despising the easy route.Obviously,
such behavior rarely allows one the opportunities to attain mass popularity,
however deserving; but it is the mark of Centazzo - the man and the artist.
To examine his work, you must first acknowledge whose work it is, we begin
with his there is pragmatism, but the aura of romanticism, typical of
the musical researcher, is everpresent too. A lonely, secluded figure
who expresses himself nearly exclusively through his work, and shuns the
superficiality of "society" and of "show business".
As though whenever faced with a choice between an uphill struggle and
a downhill ride, Centazzo has invariably chosen to clamber upwards along
the openness to the possibilities of diversity, anomaly and extraneousness,
and his perpetual desire for growth and change.
"I believe in the artist as homo faber, as 'he who creates'.
We are free to interpret this creation by various standards. The artist
in contemporary society has an identity and an aesthetics of life which
enter into his work, which in turn become social - in the communication
of messages and the opening of new spaces, and anti-social - by introversion
and self-indulgence. It is difficult to find an artist who is not a bit
of both. Even Leonardo, who foresaw a thousand years of history, was egotistic
and narcissistic. The important thing is to live one's art responsibly,
and not as if one were God. Furthermore, I believe in the total artist,
the 'transgressor'. These days it's impossible to create art exclusively
for the final product, which is condemned to a rapid fossilization given
the frenetic evolution of mass media and multi-media technology."
From adolescence his bright mind was intuitively attracted to art in all
its forms: literature, plastic arts, theatre and, finally, music. Each
alternately aroused his interest, replacing one another in turn, or were
temporarily shoved aside by his strict classical studies. Ultimately,
the art of sounds won (even though it was in its most amateurish and basic
of forms), with his discovery of jazz and "beat music" (early
rock) in the early '60s. Centazzo's home town of Udine, a small town in
northern Italy, was a far cry from a cultural center. Lacking any didactic
or professional musical institutions, Udine entrusted its musical life
to groups of willing amateurs whom Centazzo joined. He began by attending
jam sessions and small jazz concerts, and listening to rare records.
Generally in those days to be interested in jazz had a specific meaning.
It meant going against the current, cutting one self off from the rules
of the bourgeoisie society which governed everyday life in the provinces.
As if to drive home his commitment to music, and especially to jazz, after
a brief unsatisfactory experience studying clarinet at the music high
school, Centazzo began banging a drum kit in a group formed with various
school friends. The group, "The Messengers"', played at student
parties and in dance halls, aping in mierocosm the rituals and trends
of the great youth music revolution of those times, signified by the songs
of the Beatles and other beat groups, followed by rhythm and blues, and
rock.
"Even if it was just a Kids’ game" says Centex, "My
enthusiasm and determination for my musical vocation was already apparent.
In fact, I was the one who got the contacts for the gigs. I was the one
who looked after the technical requirements of the band (instruments,
amplifiers etc.), and I was the one who was always looking for new ways
to promote the band. I even managed to persuade my three buddies to come
with me to Rome to audition for the legendary RCA. But while I was dreaming
of a future in music, my friends were happily on the way to becoming middle-class
doctors and architects. For them music was just a hobby."
This short chapter in his musical life came to an end with his finishing
high school. Following in the family legal tradition, Centazzo enrolled
in School of Law al the University of Trieste. His hope was to somehow
reconcile law studies required by the family with his desire to pursue
music. Despite the fact that the legal studies were more time consuming
than he had imagined, they did not succeed in diverting his attention
from music, nor from his eclectic interests in art and literature; on
the contrary, the desire to dedicate himself completely to music, and
especially jazz, grew ever stronger.
Unfortunately, in those days Udine was, and remains, anything but artistically
simulating. It was more or less completely lacking in cultural institutions
of a musical nature and, geographically, it was poorly situated to derive
benefit from other great cultural centers. At that time there were many
limitations to small town life. The occasional local musical events had
a tendency to be either classical or folkloristic. To yearn for more required
diligence, work and imagination. Centazzo still fondly recalls an eight
hour train journey to Milan to sec a concert given by Duke Ellington and
Ella Fitzgerald. This was not the only daring expedition undertaken to
see artists who at home were the stuff of distant legends. It was nearly
impossible to find contemporary and avant-garde jazz records but, with
a bit of patience, you could get these by mail-order. Which is precisely
how Centazzo began to explore new worlds of sound, excited more and more
by free jazz. Not only was the musical content stimulating, but there
were new intellectual arenas, and elements that broke with the predominant
musical ideology.
On a cultural and existential level this was a trying period for Centazzo.
Until this time, his passion for music had been nurtured alone. He was
self-taught and struggling to continue to satiate his appetite for more
creative input, but the lack of didactics and formal, artistic points
of reference were daunting, as was his aversion for bourgeois mentality
and for his future life as a lawyer as preordained by his family. But
without direction, Centazzo found himself scurrying feverishly along ever
more desperate paths, sometimes even down blind alleys, alienating him
from his family and the society around him. Life as a professional musician
seemed an elusive dream.
The turning point came in 1970 when he read in an industry magazine, Musica
Jazz, that the Swiss Jazz School was organizing a summer holiday Jazz
Clinie in Wengen. He decided to enroll and attend the drum course held
by Pierre Favre, Peter Giger and Stu Martin. Centazzo found the atmosphere
at Wengen particularly open and stimulating, both because of the teaching
of Pierre Favre, and because of the opportunity to meet artists like Peter
Giger and Stu Martin, as well as Johnny Griffin, Slide Hampton and many
others. This fertile experience fueled and defined his ideas of music,
and it was due to the impetus of this galvanizing experience at Wengen,
that he decided to dedicate himself completely to music.
Indeed, Centazzo would return to Switzerland in 1972 to attend the Swiss
Jazz School in Bern on a full time basis. His artistic relationship with
Pierre Favre became ever closer; taking private lessons from Favre at
his studio in Zurich to supplement the group lessons at the school. This
was are intense year, burgeoning with experience, and during which Centazzo,
dedicated himself to his instrument for up to twelve hours a day, in an
attempt to make up for the "non-musical" years of his adolescence.
"lt was my first experience of artistic trance," recalls Centazzo,
"looking into my drum set, the world around me disappeared. In the
tiny practice studio I was given, time lost all meaning, fatigue would
disappear, and sleep was just an optional extra. For weeks on end I would
only see the light of day when I interrupted my studying for a quick bite
of food. Otherwise, I entered the school at dawn and would leave in the
middle of the night."
It was during this period that Favre became a cornerstone in Centazzo's
artistic development; a guru who imparted to him essential truths and
values through a fluent dialectical relationship. "For me Pierre
became more than just a teacher of percussion technique. Obviously he
was that too; an amazing tutor! But what fascinated me most about this
man was his conceptualization of music: jazz, improvisation, African music,
contemporary percussion - everything came together in him in a clear creative
aesthetic stream in which I dipped my open hands, trying to fix these
concepts in my mind as an artist and in my hands as a performer. I truly
believe it was Favre who taught me to use my sound and my technique in
the pursuit of a precise musical idea. In other words, he taught me to
create music rather than to just play no instrument."
Although totally immersed now in music, in order to reconcile this new
found love with his conscience, he finished his law studies then immediately
enrolled at the School of Musicology at Bologna University (known today
as D.A.M.S.) to research musical Paleology. "The choice of Paleology,"
explains Centazzo, "was really something of a necessity, given the
trends in musicology then. But there was a certain shrewdness in my choice,
I knew full well that within the faculty there were open-minded professors
like Mario Baroni, I managed to extract the most out of the course, broadening
my studies to include contemporary music, and eventually graduating with
a thesis on Edgar Varèse."
At25, an age at which most musicians have their debut performance well
be behind them, Centazzo embarked on his new career.
Centazzo gave his first concert at the Palamostre in Udine on the 31st
of March 1973. Fronting a quartet with Franco Feruglio, Armando Battiston
and Virginio Zanbelli, he explored possible contaminations and multiple
stylistic directions in an experience to which he gave the name Jazzrockconcert
One. In the program notes to the concert Centazzo explained that this
intriguing title had been chosen for various reasons, among them "the
desire to go beyond the innate diffidence of the consumer when faced with
an unknown product...," he went on to say, " This music is not
intended to be just jazz (even if the program includes some pieces which
are strictly from the jazz tradition), nor just rock (a music which is
a cultural sub-species), it is intended to be simply an experience, without
a label, which should partly reflect that which is the current trend in
musical sensibility; while earnestly trying not to fall into the trap
of mystification for commercial reasons - the usual formula for 'popular'
music."
Centazzo, here as exiguous prophet, has synthesized some of the fixed
and salient points to characterize all the philosophy of his music and
his future musical creations. Careful analysis reveals that all Centazzo's
work, from is debut to the present day, offers a musical experience
without labels, even if the critics stubbornly persisted in trying to
saddle him with a label. Instead of being caged into a single area, Centazzo's
music exists to roam free.
Meanwhile, his fascination with the sounds of percussion led him to continue
an in depth research, as a performer, into the tone-color and melodic
aspects of percussion, and as a musicologist, into the foreign texts on
the subject. With great obstinacy and determination he managed in the
first three years to present himself in a whirlwind of concert
activity, appearances which would increase in number exponentially as
the years passed. In addition to the performances, came album, radio and
television recordings, writing for industry magazines, critiquing for
the newspapers and work as a music consultant for the RAI (Italian state
radio and television). As though in these first years he was trying feverishly
to make up for the lost time of his non-musical education, and his years
of doubt and insecurity.
Following this first successful concert came many others with Armando
Battiston - a duo which was hailed by the critics as the "revelation
of the year in the sleepy world of Italian jazz." Together they confronted
the challenge of their first record "Ictus", a collection of
pieces which still haven't lost anything to the passing of time; a substantial
music not only because of the evocative power of the creative melopeia
and the smooth jazzy echoes, but also the refinement of its expression
and techniques. Franco Fayenz, music critic and producer of Ictus, wrote
"I was struck by the creative vigor of Centazzo with is percussion
that was so varied and innovative." Fayenz, the Pygmalion of this
emerging talent, carefully oversaw Centazzo's work, and put him in touch
with Giorgio Gaslini, then the polestar of the Italian jazz scene, who
was looking for a new and original percussionist. Gaslini was immediately
impressed and excited by Centazzo's intimate approach to music as well
as Centazzo's extraordinary drum set. So impressed, in fact, that Centazzo
was invited to join saxophonist Gianni Bedori, bass player Bruno Tommaso,
and Gaslini himself, on piano, to form the celebrated Quartetto Gaslini.
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