Known in his native Italy and most of Europe as a composer who has written symphonies and lyric operas as well as scores for feature films, theatre productions, and multi-media efforts, Andrea Centazzo also has a history playing with international improvisers.
For about 15 years from the mid-1970s, as a percussionist, Centazzo recorded in different settings with such experimenters as saxophonists Steve Lacy and Evan Parker, guitarists Eugene Chadbourne and Derek Bailey and cellist Tom Cora. A series of discs was released on his own Ictus imprint, including most of the tracks found here with this large band. Organized as sort of a last hurrah by the composer to bring together acknowledged master improvisers and emerging talents, The Mitteleuropa Orchestra lasted from 1980 to 1990, after which writing became Centazzo’s primary focus.
That action should give you a clue as to why, although everything from ACMO vault is choice, the 1980 compositions seem more exciting. Turning from being an improviser/player/composer like Duke Ellington or Charles Mingus to a score paper composer, the percussionist seems to have accepted the conventions of so-called serious music. Except for the soloists, who are improvisers in their own right, the 1983 ensemble lacks the excitement of the 1980 band.
Because of the experiments of Centazzo and other improvisers, this percussion and reed-driven way of approaching composition has entered into the lingua franca of most European composers. Musicians today also move back and forth more between composed, improvised and electronic genres.
One fascination is to hear how different -- or similar -- contemporary improvisers sounded 20 years ago. For instance, which seems to encompass what sound like ascending kettledrum tones mixed with a theme that could have been arranged by Gil Evans for MILES AHEAD, Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro lets loose with a frenzied double and triple-stopped solo that sounds a lot more like what Jean-Luc Ponty or Jerry Goodman were doing at that time than the sort of abrasive, diffident, electronic-influenced sounds he plays now. Double stopping so that more than one string sounds at a time, his classical training shows when he heads into the highest register without muddying his tone. Some Andalusian gypsy fire makes itself felt there as well.
Zingaro is surprisingly swinging, in contrast to the massed, atonal xylophone, vibraharp, bells and other miscellaneous percussion that make appearances here as a pliant pulse track. So do screaming multiphonics from one of the saxophone players. Someone -- likely Centazzo himself -- produces some jazz licks on what appears to be a small, tuned drum after tenor saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano expresses a Continental homage to John Coltrane. Another tremendous shock is to hear trumpeters Enrico Rava and Franz Koglmann trade fours. Rava who was midway between the avant- garde style he used with Lacy and his present Romantic persona probably never sounded more conventional. While Koglmann, the Austrian brass man who has made a virtue of a restrained, withdrawn, semi-classical tone, has never sounded more so-called jazzy.
A as far as improvised music goes, the Mitteleuropa Orchestra comes out with the crown…
(Text courtesy of Ken Waxman )
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