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Regarded as one of the most influential percussionist of the last 30 years, Andrea Centazzo has performed at the most important festivals and concert series both in Europe and the United States as soloist, in combination with other artists, and as conductor. Early in the eighties, and later in the last few years he has been associated with many seminal percussionists, playing duets, trios and ensembles with Andrew Cyrille, Barry Altschul, Tony Oxley, Paul Lytton, Paul Lovens, Pierre Favre and many others.

Born and raised in Italy, but naturalized American and living in Los Angeles since 1992, Centazzo after more than a decade dedicated mainly to composing, conducting and video-making went back in 2000 to his first love, the solo percussion concert. In his solo program called No Boundaries Centazzo once again blends his percussion, playing on a set of over 200 instruments, with cymbals, gongs, electronics, computer sequencing and digital sampling, bringing to the listener the emotion of a new sonic adventure in jazz, world and contemporary avant-garde music. His melodic composing along with his ostinato patterns and his mastery of percussion improvising create a music beyond any expectation.

Andrea Centazzo’s solo performance is the closing event of this year’s Metabonma concert series, curated by Jože Bogolin and Simon Klavžar.

8 December 2016, Thursday 21.00 – Klub Gromka, Ljubljana

“There is an unknown music. Hidden, to be discovered. Deciphered. There is a past, a now, and a coming. And there is something else. Out of time. Here are two spines – backbones of improvisation. Here’s the vast chatter. There’s an unknown music known to our inner ears. Here are fingerboards and jaws. Amplifying the balance between falling and not falling. Here are Tristan Honsinger and Joel Grip. A sonorous dance of extreme troubadours.”

Tristan Honsinger is a cello player active in free jazz and free improvisation. He is perhaps best known for his long-running collaboration with free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and guitarist Derek Bailey. He studied at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, but by the seventies, the Trans-American had moved to Amsterdam and formed the Instant Composers Pool with drummer Han Bennink and radical pianist Misha Mengelberg. With this avant-jazz group, his music transcended the classical conservatory background he had and he began to incorporate wild, free improvisation, jazz, and European folk music into his cannon, not to mention a kinship with Bertolt Brecht theatre, which would put an edge on performances and recordings that take on experimental strategies, some of which include what could be considered violent attacks on the instrument. The range of emotions that is covered in a piece by Tristan Honsinger is striking in that it is very accessible for so-called avant-garde music. In the eighties, he recorded for the prestigious FMP label and in the nineties, for numerous recording companies, including Winter & Winter, I.C.P., and legendary jazz archivists Hat Hut from Switzerland.

For a number of years now, energetic double bassist, filmmaker and producer Joel Grip has played an important role for the new scenes of improvised music in Europe. As founder of Umlaut Records, he opened up for creative forms of organizing collectives of musicians and promoting their music internationally. Since 2003 he has been one of the main organizers of Hagenfesten in Dala-Floda, Sweden, a stand-alone festival, and quite frankly possibly the most pleasant venue for free improvised music not only in Sweden but in the whole of Europe. Few other places offer quite the same endearing combination of sophisticated musical risk-taking, and up-beat, social get-together. Grip’s musicianship is informed by a similar knack for welding musical sophistication with social communication, often with an analog film camera at hand. With a handful of short films Joel Grip met mexican filmmaker Mauricio Hernández and shortly the film production company Umlicht was established. They are right now working on their third and forth feature film together. Umdicht is amplifying the pencil of Joel Grip’s hand, partly through the irregular issue of Lösa Blad and partly in the future release of books.

1 December 2016, Thursday 20.30 – Vodnikova Domačija Šiška, Ljubljana

“Textile art has regained the attention of artistic public in the past few years. Guerrilla knitting and production of authentic textile designers are present at numerous outdoor and indoor public spaces. Even though textile crafts are still understood as a domain where women traditionally prevail, a closer look into the past reveals quite a different story. Several textile professions such as carpet-making are mostly performed by men. Closer to glory and fortune we come across tailors and male fashion designers today. The presence of male textile artists in the contemporary art should thus not surprise us.

The conceptual outset of the exhibition of textile portraits of Jan Bejšovec and Anže Ermenc is based on their differences of experience and interests. The artists are of different nationality and age. On top of that, they have never met each other. At the time when Jan Bejšovec, from Berlin, first arrived in Ljubljana, Anže Ermenc was leaving Ljubljana for Manchester. Despite numerous differences they are related by their mutual interest in contemporary textile arts, so they have both accepted the invitation of the Alkatraz Gallery and joined their efforts in a way we had not expected.

The exhibition will be the scene of confrontation of different beliefs and views on textile arts, at the same time also a kind of a dialogue of the two artists of different experiences. The audience will hence have an opportunity to observe two very different styles of textile arts. While Ermenc employs his embroidery as a tool when dealing with uneasiness and the reflection of his own personal experiences with the aid of satire and in his wider (fashionable) scope questions social determination of the value and visibility of unfashionable and unpopular individuals, Bejšovec prefers to focus on portraying controversial personalities from the history and politics in hope to set up conflict situations in political, and not personal sense. The attempt of Bejšovec and Ermenc displays an unusual versatility of contemporary textile arts.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the opening of the The Other Self – A Textile Perspective On Exploring Identity And Belonging exhibition by Jan Bejšovec and Anže Ermenc on 29 November, Tuesday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery.

On display: 29 November 2016 – 16 December 2016