No Favorites!, Electric Ascension and all other Quartet Collaborations

No Favorites!

In 2015, Rova premiered an evening of three long compositions collectively entitled No Favorites: Music for Lawrence "Butch" Morris. All the pieces highlight long-time Rova improvisational strategies, including Rova's unique hand-cueing system. These three pieces complemented each other brilliantly in performance and led to a standing ovation from the San Francisco audience.

[ Read more ]

Electric Ascension

"Rova, with its inspired Orkestrova, engages Coltrane's uncompromising compositional attitude and boundaries, pushing with its own sense of informed and masterful improvisation. This marrying of great minds and souls is what makes Electric Ascension such a great triumph. This time Coltrane's music not only heats the nearby atmosphere but also chills out your mind." -- Allaboutjazz.com

[ Read more ]

The Sax Cloud

In June of 2010, under the direction of Rova's Jon Raskin and Steve Adams, Rova:Arts organized an evening of music for 16 saxophonists presented "in the round" - surrounding the audience. The quadruple quartet performed two set-long pieces, one each by Raskin and Adams.

[ Read more ]

Fissures, Futures Ensemble (for Buckminster Fuller)

Rova Saxophone Quartet initiates most of its larger special projects as part Rovaté, its annual series set in San Francisco. Rovaté 2009 brought together Lillevan Pobjoy, the acclaimed, Berlin-based multimedia-artist, with the newest OrkestRova combination: a 10 piece ensemble of local and international greats from the field of improvised music in a sax quartet plus string quartet plus electronics and percussion format. This no-sounds-barred evening of improvisatory collaboration consisted of a suite of pieces collectively known as Fissures, Futures, original compositions dedicated to the visionary genius that was Buckminster Fuller. Each composition, commissioned by Rova:Arts and created by 5 different members of the new Orkestrova, inspired and interacted with the live digital animation from Lillevan in different ways, but in all cases the music influenced the real-time films' creation and the film images inspired the musicians, who were situated in such a way that they could react to the animation as it was created in real time. Both shows were recorded live for future DVD release. Rough edits of these pieces are available on DVD for prospective promoters. Fissures Futures will always include Rova and Lillevan, and as many of the original performers as is reasonably possible, but the exact make-up of Orkestrova is flexible and open to scheduling and budget considerations.

[ Read more ]

The Celestial Septet

Rova meets up with the Nels Cline Singers, sneaks into a phone booth, and becomes The Celestial Septet. With the great Singers' rhythm section of Devin Hoff and Scott Amendola pushing everyone majestically, the band performed three concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area in May 2008. The results were so exciting and in some ways unexpected that the septet decided to reconvene in November 2008 for one more live concert followed immediately by 2 days in the studio. The results of that recording session (plus one piece recorded live at Yoshi's San Francisco) will be released by New World Records in spring 2010.

[ Read more ]

Glass Head

Glass Head (2006) is a collaborative performance by the Rova Saxophone Quartet (Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Steve Adams and Bruce Ackley) and Butoh-inspired dance collective inkBoat (featuring dancers Shinichi Iova-Koga and Yuko Kaseki, interactive media designer Eric Koziol, director Ernie Lafky and lighting designer Allen Willner). The work was commissioned by Rova:Arts with a generous grant from The Creative Work Fund.

[ Read more ]

The Mirror World

According to Larry Ochs, the idea for The Mirror World (For Stan Brakhage) arose in part from concepts of musical space and gesture in his recent composing. The other inspiration for The Mirror World, as the work's subtitle implies, is the revolutionary filmmaking of Stan Brakhage, the great "experimental" US film-maker. In composing this new piece, Ochs studied in depth the many levels (including levels-within-levels) on which Brakhage communicates - including individual film frames; series of frames that, seen outside the projector, form a composite image; and a complete film as traditionally viewed on a screen. Ochs then adapted and built on these techniques for the medium of improvised music, organizing sound in a number of nested, overlapping, or even contrasting levels (e.g., the individual musician, multiple sub-groupings of musicians within the ensemble, the entire 13-piece ensemble). An important departure from Brakhage's work in this piece is the role of improvisation while the musicians and groups of musicians will follow pre-established rules or cues, any given performance of The Mirror World will evolve in the moment, pursuing an infinite number of possibilities. Therefore, as in all structured improvisation, while the listener will detect similarities across multiple performances, no two performances will ever be alike.

[ Read more ]

An Alligator in your Wallet

“It's about ‘joining forces’ more than it is about commissioning a piece of music,” Larry Ochs says of Rova’s strategy for working with others. “You scout for like-minded artists, and then you hope that your commissioning and collaborating will result in something more than the sum of its parts. You try to develop a relationship and then let the process take care of itself, hoping that the artist will adapt her wide set of interests to the situation, and expecting that both sides will learn and grow from the experience.”

[ Read more ]

The Hear and Now

The Hear and Now is an amazingly flexible piece of music: the instrumentation can change completely from performance to performance; the size of the ensemble can be adapted to fit any space; any given performance is adaptable to musicians at every level of experience; the level of complexity is open whatever amount of rehearsal time an ensemble wants to give it. In essence: every performance is a virtual world premiere. The Hear and Now is a graphic composition for improvising musicians which draws on the system of group-improvisation developed by Rova entitled Radar. The work consists of visual elements, written music, conceptual strategies, and games, all employed to create a form of structured improvisation. There is a conductor who helps guide the work, but the performers decide much of the material and content as the piece develops in real time.

[ Read more ]

OkestRova

When Rova expands the ensemble to include five or more musicians plus the four Rova members, we call the band Orkestrova. In The Mirror World, An Alligator in Your Wallet, and The Hear and Now, each ensemble is yet another version of OrkestRova, always defined as an ensemble of like-minded musicians assembled especially to perform music involving structure and improvisation.

Historical Collaborations

Past Rova performances with debut date of performances in parentheses. Theoretically, any of these performances could be remounted upon request.

[ Read more ]