Andrea Centazzo, born in Udine in 1948, is an Italian-born American percussionist, composer, conductor and video artist. In more than fifty years he has given over 1500 concerts in Europe and the United States, playing a kit extended with a hundred small bells, gongs and metal objects that turns percussion into a melodic instrument. In 1976 he founded Ictus Records, among the first Italian labels devoted to free improvisation, and used it to document his meetings with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and John Zorn; his Mitteleuropa Orchestra of the early 1980s brought that scene together on a large scale.