Andrea Centazzo: Musical Renaissance Man (M. Bettine)

Over the past thirty years, Italian composer - percussionist - multimedia artist Andrea Centazzo has created an amazing body of work, spanning a wide range of musical styles.
Starting in the 1970s, he helped instigate the free jazz movement in both Europe and America.
In the 1980s, he combined his compositions with both ethnic and environmental sounds, anticipating what would become new age music.
He also produced large scale ensemble works, starting with the formation of his Mitteleuropa Orchestra in the early 1980s, going on to write and produce operas, symphonies, and music for films. Centazzo has traveled the globe, incorporating various ethnic musics into his own, and in the 1990s he combined video and music into cutting edge multi-media performances, creating a signature musical language easily identified as his own.

Michael Bettine
(journalist/writer), Milwaukee, January 2005