★Ictus Records

** 2 LP Set + Dedicated Tote Bag Special Bundle Price ** In the summer of 1976, a peculiar album appeared in Italian record shops bearing no artist name - only the cryptic moniker Elektriktus. The music posed a question that wouldn't be answered for decades: who had created this hybrid of jazz sensibility and kosmische synthesis? The answer was hiding in plain sight. Andrea Centazzo - recognized figure in European free improvisation who had shared stages with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, and Derek B…

The archive is not neutral. In 2019, Andrea Centazzo discovered unlabeled tape reels in his mother's attic in Udine - boxes assumed lost seven years earlier. What emerged from these deteriorating reels, transferred by engineer Sergio Tomasini during COVID lockdowns, was unexpected: unreleased recordings from the original Elektriktus sessions of 1973-76, alongside other archival materials including previously unknown collaborations with Steve Lacy and Evan Parker from the same period. Centazzo's …

In the summer of 1976, a peculiar album appeared in Italian record shops bearing no artist name - only the cryptic moniker Elektriktus. The music posed a question that wouldn't be answered for decades: who had created this hybrid of jazz sensibility and kosmische synthesis? The answer was hiding in plain sight. Andrea Centazzo - recognized figure in European free improvisation who had shared stages with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, and Derek Bailey - had been leading a double life between touring wi…

Launching into the new year with some serious heat, the seminal Italian free jazz imprint ICTUS Records returns with their Reissue Series dedicated to archival unreleased gems and back catalogue releases, with three of their most exciting and exhilarating reissues to date: Evan Parker & Andrea Centazzo's "Bullfighting On Ice", and Alvin Curran, Evan Parker, & Andrea Centazzo's “Real Time” and “Real Time Two”. Capturing three of avant-garde music's most visionary voices in rare collaborations at …

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** This album is a historical document in several respects: echo of a creative season in its early, vigorous blossoming, it presents groundbreaking music as it was performed and listened to in a moment that now seems very distant, not just chronologically but also in terms of its cultural context. Furthermore, it serves as a testament to the initial opening of the emerging Italian free music scene to Northern European experience…

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli. "It was a magic evening. Not only did the trio burst with a creative energy that was homogeneous and interactive, but the acoustics, usually inadequate, of the half-empty sports pavilion with a capacity of 10,000 people, gave the music an ethereal transparency and crystalline…

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Alvin Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Evan Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his o…

* Dead stock copy coming  from the artist's archive. Possible wear due to the long storage * On the same trip to the United States that produced  “U.S.A. Concerts” and “Environment for Sextet”, Andrea Centazzo also connected with the San Francisco-based Rova Saxophone Quartet, formed the previous year by Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Andrew Voigt and Bruce Ackley (all playing various saxophones). While not as well-known now as they once were, over the last 40+ years the ensemble has produced dozens of…

*2023 stock* In the history of free improvised music, there has been arguably no greater advocate for the idiom’s power and potential than the English guitarist Derek Bailey. Fiercely principled, between his emergence during the 1960s and his death is 2005, he cut a wide path, positioning this music at the height of creativity, transpiring in real time, and a means through which people from diverse background could come together, express, and commune. For Bailey, “playing is about playing with o…

*2023 stock* Originally issued in 1977 as the 5th entry in the Ictus catalog, Trio Live was recorded in 1976, only a handful of days after Steve Lacy and Andrea Centazzo’s Clangs was laid to tape, presumably capturing another moment on the same two-week tour that had rendered the recordings for its brilliant predecessor. This time, the pair - Lacy and Centazzo - is joined by the American bassist, Kent Carter, a sinfully under-appreciated artist who had worked extensively in Steve Lacy's group, p…

**Back in stock, very last copies** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes.** Issued in limited editions of 250 copies, they stand among the most important and sinfully overlooked documents of the movement of global improvisation that unfurled during the 1970s, and can’t be missed.This bundle (with additional and exclusive dedicated tote bag) includes the following four LPs:- Andrea Centazzo "U.S.A. Concerts" (1978)- Andrea Centazzo, Rova Saxophone Quartet "The Bay" (19…

Tip! The final two LPs in the latest Ictus batch, “The Ictus Archives Vol. 1” and “The Ictus Archives Vol. 2”,  both draw on the same period that the veteran saxophonist produced “Clangs” and “Trio Live”, both recorded in 1976 during of two weeks that he was touring Italy with Andrea Centazzo,  released in 1976 and 77 respectively, and reissued in 2021’s batch. Gathering four sides of material, issued as two individual LPs, we are offered an incredible insight into that moment’s striking collabo…

Tip! The final two LPs in the latest Ictus batch, “The Ictus Archives Vol. 1” and “The Ictus Archives Vol. 2”,  both draw on the same period that the veteran saxophonist produced “Clangs” and “Trio Live”, both recorded in 1976 during of two weeks that he was touring Italy with Andrea Centazzo,  released in 1976 and 77 respectively, and reissued in 2021’s batch. Gathering four sides of material, issued as two individual LPs, we are offered an incredible insight into that moment’s striking collabo…

Super Tip! *250 copies limited edition* The Italian imprint, Ictus, was founded in 1976 by percussionist and composer, Andrea Centazzo, and his wife Carla Lugli.  Running for just under a decade, until relaunching during the mid-2000s, the label produced a couple of dozen highly highly celebrated releases, the majority of which loosely fall under the banner of free jazz. Ictus’ second batch of releases from the label’s historic archives logically begins with Andrea Centazzo’s “U.S.A. Concerts”, …

*2023 repress* Out of print and hotly pursued on the secondary market, we’re thrilled to announce a much needed reissue initiative, dedicated to Ictus’ back catalog, beginning with four LPs, Steve Lacy and Andrea Centazzo’s Clangs, originally issued in 1976, Derek Bailey and Andrea Centazzo’s Drops, originally issued in 1977, Steve Lacy, Andrea Centazzo, and Kent Carter’s Trio Live, also from 1977, and John Zorn, Andrea Centazzo, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Toshinori Kondo, and Polly Bradfield’…

*2023 stock* "Back in March 2020, when Covid was taking over the world, we quietly released "The Journey" by Perry Robinson and Andrea Centazzo. We dedicated it to the free spirit clarinetist who journeyed away to the stars on December 2, 2018. During the pandemic lockdown, Andrea rediscovered his duo concert with Perry at The Taoist Sanctuary, which took place on May 29, 2015, the night before "The Journey" session. Peter Kuhn, who also performed with Perry that night with his trio, recorded th…

*2023 stock* "Sometime an old box of tapes, overlooked for decades, could reserve nice surprises. This album is a collection of those surprises. In the years of my collaboration with Steve Lacy, we did a lot of recording and we selected what was the best for the short length of the vinyl LPs. So some tracks were edited leaving part of the improvisations out or discarded for a similarity with something already included in the albums. Thanks to the digital editing, I had the chance to reorganize t…

*2023 stock* "Gongs have been part of my life since 1970, when as Jazz Swiss School student in Bern (Switzerland), I had the lucky opportunity to visit the Paiste, Cymbal and Gongs factory. I was immediately fascinated by the sonic world of the gong and related metal percussion and I started dreaming a future that could possibly include those marvelous instruments. Few years later, while in New York on my first US trip, I found few Albums of Balinese Music in a small record store in the Greenwic…

*2023 stock* "The West Coast Chamber Jazz Trio, recently formed, remains faithful to its name, in the sense that the undoubted chamber size and the jazz component, apparent in rhythmic melodic lines and improvisation always kept under control, are beautifully conjugated in the narrative modes, colloquialisms and relaxed of the Californian jazz, not only from the fifties and sixties, but also that one of the most recent landings …" - Libero Farnè

*2023 stock* "The mid 1970s was an exciting time for free improvisation and a great deal was happening all over the world as like minded musicians were drawn to each other by a magnetic pull that had us crossing oceans and large distances of land to work together. England, America, Italy, Germany, Holland, Canada, Japan, Australia and many other territories all boasted scenes of various sizes, and players were mixing and matching in a wide variety of formations, across several generations. Recor…

*2023 stock* "The release of the two volumes of October Wind, on the tenth anniversary of Steve Lacy death, has a special meaning for me. Not only because it’s probably the last unreleased recording of this extraordinary trio, but also because I was working on it with my dearest friend Gilles Laheurte, who had been one of the best friend of the late Steve Lacy. Gilles was a scholar of Steve Lacy music and I had the privilege to have his liner notes on the previous re-discovered trio recording re…

*2023 stock* "The release of the two volumes of October Wind, on the tenth anniversary of Steve Lacy death, has a special meaning for me. Not only because it’s probably the last unreleased recording of this extraordinary trio, but also because I was working on it with my dearest friend Gilles Laheurte, who had been one of the best friend of the late Steve Lacy. Gilles was a scholar of Steve Lacy music and I had the privilege to have his liner notes on the previous re-discovered trio recording re…

*2023 stock* "This is quite an attention-catching band, with its two very clever trombones styles, a piano fully explored both inside and outside, and a truly stunning multi-effects percussions set. As a quartet, the musicians had never played together until that particular evening of the Ictus’ 35th anniversary Festival. Yet what we hear from the very first bars is a band in the communion of the moment, painting together greatly textured music with many surprising turns. Their creative energies…

*2023 stock* Violinist LaDonna Smith and Guitarist Davey Williams teams up with Andrea Centazzo in this third release of their complete recording collection. Recorded in NYC at the Stone during the Ictus Nights Festival celebrating 35 years of Ictus, this CD is a must for improvised music lovers.

*2023 stock* "Celebrating a label's 35th anniversary at a venue as iconic as The Stone in New York City is already quite revealing of the nature of the music to be heard, i.e. definitely unusual and daring, definitely with no piano bar and no noisy cash register... But with the present celebration, there was an added element of surprise, as Andrea Centazzo — founder of the creative Ictus label and curator of the 12 nights Festival (April 1-14, 2012) -- brought for the first time ever to the hear…

*2023 stock* "Celebrating a label's 35th anniversary at a venue as iconic as The Stone in New York City is already quite revealing of the nature of the music to be heard, i.e. definitely unusual and daring, definitely with no piano bar and no noisy cash register... But with the present celebration, there was an added element of surprise, as Andrea Centazzo — founder of the creative Ictus label and curator of the 12 nights Festival (April 1-14, 2012) -- brought for the first time ever to the hear…

*2023 stock* "For Derek Bailey, improvisation was an end unto itself. He considered the artistic practice to be so sacrosanct that he almost viewed recording as a perversion. Why preserve for posterity a musical act that is meant to be experienced in the moment? Fortunately for us, the most unique improviser to ever strike against six strings has left behind plenty of recordings for us to puzzle over, thanks in large part to percussionist Andrea Centazzo’s label Ictus. One particular record, Dro…

*2023 stock* "On a summer-like evening of May 2012 in Milan, Italy, three master improvisers played together for the first time, and created music full of spontaneity and ethereal beauty at JapzItaly – Jazz Aid for Japanese Children. At a superficial level, Andrea Centazzo – the idiosyncratic composer and percussionist renowned for refined finesse – and Akira Sakata – the iconoclastic reedman famed with volcanic emotional display – would make an ‘odd’ musical team. Despite this presumption, guid…

*2023 stock* "There are no coincidences in life. Everything responds to the principle of cause and effect. In all that exists, what often seems to be the result of “chance happening” always comes from a precise and definite source located “somewhere out there,” but that in fact rests deep within each one of us. Everything is linked. There is a reason for everything that we find on our path, even if we do not understand what its purpose really is at the time of its first manifestation. It is ofte…

*2023 stock* Having been fortunate enough to witness these three masters of improvisation reconvene after nearly thirty years of separation at the 2010 Improvisor Festival, I can say with the utmost confidence that time has not diminished the creative fire that first led them to collaborate so many years ago. Driven by the same passion and intensity for sonic shapeshifting that sparked their first European and American tours together in the late 1970's- and some of the first transcontinental int…

*2023 stock* “Textures and Pulsations” is a multilayered sonic meeting between two gifted and imaginative pianist/composers, Aruán Ortiz and Bob Gluck. With two pianos and poignantly etched live electronics, this pair crafts a mélange of subtly shifting textures, lyrical melodies, and engaging grooves. This collection of carefully articulated, highly virtuosic improvisations is a study in contrast, offering moments of subtlety and power. Musical moods range from wild flights of pianistic fantasy…

*2023 stock* "In ancient Rome, chariot racing was one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Young nobles used to fiercely race their chariots around the 7 hills of the city. People on their path had to scatter to get out of the way, as they stopped for no one.  But the event always generated strong spectator enthusiasm. In today’s New York, as this “Centazzo Invasion Orchestra” concert was progressing that evening at the Stone, I suddenly had a vision of such a mighty show. Like those Roma…

*2023 stock* Some of the best improvised percussion solos from the early years.

*2023 stock* "In a morning of 2 years ago, I got a surprising email from somebody from my past: guitarist Roberto Zorzi. I think to remember that we met briefly in 1975 only and then our paths diverged until that email out of the blue. Roberto was in Los Angeles visiting, so we had the opportunity to reconnect and meet. I had the chance to listen to his past works and I was very impressed. Very versatile and innovative guitarist who deserves much greater recognition, Roberto Zorzi is one of the …

*2023 stock* "On September 23, 2010, the day following Andrea's Kennedy Center appearance, two of my colleagues in the Twenty-first Century Chamber Ensemble, Janel Leppin (cello) and Mike Sebastian (reeds), came over to my home to jam. It was the anniversary of Coltrane's birth -- thus, "impressions" in this work's title to honor the master's legacy. I set up my recording rig to capture what I could. It was, in Andrea's words, "battlefield conditions": his expansive percussion rig in the living …

*2023 stock* Long awaited, never before published live chronicles of legendary Kondo / Chadbourne / Centazzo 1979 Italian tour. The document of the time, the music, and one of the direction of the improvised art form in late 70s. "We showed up at the train with all the equipment, 50 cases of percussion. The organizer is five hours late to meet. Then we all get searched on highway by the Italian police, looking for terrorists of the Red Brigade…" - Eugene Chadbourne

*2023 stock* Released originally as double LP: Cjant - First Concert For Small Orchestra Based Upon Friulian Folk Songs, is Centazzo's first orchestral composition combining a string section along with the original Mitteleuropa (Free Jazz) Orchestra. The name for the ensemble came not only from the cultural background of its members but also from middle-European mold of the music written for it. In the Mitteleuropa Orchestra, Centazzo brought together the finest artists in the field of creativ…

*2023 stock* "In February 2010 my good friend, pianist Nobu Stowe, invited me for some concerts in the Baltimore area. Since in the same period I was scheduled to perform in duo with John Zorn in New York, I gladly accepted. What thrilled me was the idea to play again with Nobu and with some terrific musicians that I never had the chance to perform with Dave Ballou, Daniel Barbiero and Achille Succi. The quintet recorded some of my compositions structured in the way to present instrumental combi…

*2023 stock* "On February 20th 2010 I had the privilege to start my musical collaboration with Don Preston, performing live a concert of improvised music at the South Pasadena Conservatory of Music. A very versatile keyboardist who deserves much greater recognition, Don is one of the few synthesizer players to develop his own sound on the instrument. Preston may be best known as the keyboardist with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, but is first and foremost a fine jazz pianist who has worked …

*2023 stock* Percussion improvisations and compositions from the early years. Using an array of 300 percussion instruments and the first models of electronic analog percussion Centazzo created a sonic landscape where the interaction of skin, metal and wood sounds and electronic sounds are endless in an original and futuristic blend.