Legendary percussionist/composer Andrea Centazzo performs his compositions with violin (Murray Campbell), cello (
Crystal Pascucci), and bass (Jeff Schwartz). This new ensemble presents a wide range of forms, styles, and textures, melodies, grooves, and noise. $10.
During his artistic career that spans over 40 years, percussionist, composer,author, conductor, multimedia artist Andrea Centazzo has given endless concerts and live performances in Europe, Asia and the United States, as well as appeared and performed on numerous radio and television broadcasts worldwide.
In 2011, his Alma Mater, the University of Bologna (Italy) honored him by establishing the “Fondo Centazzo” section of the University Library, where all his musical works are housed and made available to students, scholars and musicians.
In 2012 he presented 24 concerts in N.Y. for the 35th anniversary of Ictus label performing as percussionist with the top US improvisers including John Zorn, Elliott Sharp and others usual collaborators.
In 2009 he conducted the John Cage Concerto for Piano and Orchestra featuring Stephen Drury at the Williamsburg Center in NY City in a triple bill featuring also John Zorn and Philip Glass.
He has recorded over 180 LP's, CD's and DVD’s, and he has authored 500 compositions mostly published by Warner Chappell (ranging from opera and symphony to solo works), 2 drum methods and four musicology books. He is also the author of his operas' librettos and he is the director of more than 20 video films presented in all the festivals around the world based on his music.
He has performed as percussion soloist and conductor of his compositions, conducting members of the American Youth Symphonic Orchestra, the TINA Contemporary Orchestra, the Mitteleuropa Orchestra, the ER Youth Symphonic Orchestra and many other ensembles. His opera Tina was highly acclaimed in Italy (1996) as well in California (1998) where it was staged with an English libretto translation by Paul Vangelisti. In 2002 Centazzo composed and performed Sacred Shadows, a multimedia work scored for Balinese Gamelan and Western Ensemble.
Centazzo was one of the “game changers” (Drum Magazine, 2013) that started the solo improvised percussion concert movement back in 1972.
For 25 years now, Centazzo has been working to create multi-media experiences, combining live music with video images, blending traditional instrumentation with the latest music digital technology.
His collaboration as percussionist are endless; to make few names: Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, John Zorn, Lester Bowie, Alvin Carran, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser, Elliott Sharp, Andrew Cyrille, Don Preston, Barry Guy, Sylvano Bussotti, Albert Mangellsdorf, ROVA and many more.
Murray Campbell has described himself as a Sonologist ever since it was recommended to him as a more respectable occupation than “musician” for the purposes of immigration control. He currently resides in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California where he is designing an off-grid solar-powered geodesic wavefront recreation system with the aim of upsetting the bears. He finds writing about himself in the third person slightly disturbing.
Crystal Pascucci is a cellist, composer and improviser. She began playing her instrument at age nine and has always had a strong connection to music. While studying chamber music, she was assigned to play, “December 1952” by Earle Brown. This was an introduction to graphic notation and the start of an intense interest in the relationship of notation and improvisation.
Crystal’s approach to improvisation and composition are influenced greatly by her training in chamber music. Her music utilizes delicate communication amongst performing musicians, draws clear phrase lines, and uses orchestration found in small ensemble compositions. There is no one traditional tone or sound found at the aim — there is only musical intention, regardless of timbre or technique. In this way, statements are presented through a large palette — through an unconventional lens.
Music that is improvised has a certain life, character, and attentiveness that is unattainable through fixed notation. The performers are engaged in a totally different type of musical experience when improvising, one where the future is unknown and musical decisions are that of the performer. In Crystal’s compositions, she aims to create a particular musical space with fixed notation, in order to provide a musical setting for the improvising sections, or independent improvising lines.
An active performer in the Bay Area, she has recently performed the work of Roscoe Mitchell at Yoshi’s Jazz Club in Oakland, as a featured solo performer at both the NextNow Music Series and the Light A Fire Music Series, at the SIMM Series (duo with Eric Glick Rieman), the graphic-score work of Christina Stanley at the 11th Annual Outsound Summit New Music Festival, and at the 11th Annual Transbay Skronathon with Matt Davignon – performances with Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, Oakland Active Orchestra, the work of Polly Moller at the Soundwave Festival, with Opera Wolf as guest artists for the New Music Works: CAGE 950, John Cage 100th Birthday Celebration and more. Crystal is a Co-founding member of the Oakland Composer’s Union and performing with renowned clarinetist, Rachel Condry, in the improv duo, Chocolate for Breakfast.
Crystal holds a Bachelor’s of Music Performance from SUNY Fredonia, a graduate professional degree from The Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford and has attended Mills College. Her past teachers include, Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, Joan Jeanrenaud, Robert Black, Marion Feldman, Mihai Tetel, Bryan Eckenrode and David Rudge. Some of her musical influences include Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Dvorak, Barber, Ginestera, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Osvoldo Golijov, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonius Monk, Dorothy Ashby, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, Erik Friedlander, KRONOS String Quartet, Frances-Marie Uitti, Bjork, RZA, Air, Alva Noto, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Andrew Bird, The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, David Bowie, Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, Fuck Buttons, and Deerhoof.
Jeff Schwartz is co-leader of the Decisive Instant creative orchestra, principal bass of MESTO, a member of the Santa Monica Symphony, and is very active in the Los Angeles creative music community. He has also performed with artists including Anthony Braxton, Glenn Branca, Dana Reason, Nicole Mitchell, Yukari, Tracy McMullen, and Adam Rudolph, and attended the Creative Music Studio and the Vancouver Creative Music Institute. The author of a popular online biography of Albert Ayler, his writing has also appeared in the journals American Music, Popular Music, and Postmodern Culture, and in the forthcoming revision of A Basic Music Library. His day job is as a reference librarian at a public library.
Cost: $10