U.S.A. Concerts

LP

2023

Ltd.250

The Italian Ictus imprint 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 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”, originally issued in 1978 and out of print on vinyl for the majority of the time since

“U.S.A. Concerts” draws on the same rough period when Centazzo was working in the United States at “Environment for Sextet”, which was reissued in the previous batch, and features many of the same players - Polly Bradfield on violin, Eugene Chadbourne on guitar, Tom Cora on cello, and Toshinori Kondo on trumpet, and John Zorn on saxophone - in different configurations. In fact, the first, second, and seventh tracks - “Sextet Improvisation”, “Duet Improvisation # 1”, “Duet Improvisation # 4” - were all recorded on the same day at the same location - WKCR Radio in New York on November 7, 1978 - as the aforementioned album

Beginning with the brilliant textural and tonal explorations of the full ensemble encountered in  “Sextet Improvisation”, the album quickly moves toward quieter and more restrained investigations of roughly similar ground,  moving through a series of duo improvisations between the percussionist and Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, and the under-celebrated saxophonist, Jack Wright, whose howling horn is transformed to otherworldly effect by the reverberance of the space within which he works

SEALED