Rova Sax Quartet
Jon Raskin (baritone/alto and soprano saxophones/Bb clarinet), Larry Ochs (b. 3 May 1949, New York City, New York, USA; tenor, alto and sopranino saxophones), Andrew Voigt (alto, soprano, sopranino saxophones/flute), Bruce Ackley (Eb alto and Bb clarinets/soprano saxophone). Formed on America's west coast in 1977, ROVA soon established itself as the avant garde representative on the saxophone quartet front, seeking to link the new, improvised saxophone languages of players such as Anthony Braxton and Steve Lacy with both the world of contemporary composition (from Ives to Stockhausen) and extremely left-field rock (Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser). ROVA recorded at first on Kaiser's Metalanguage label, but later releases have been on European labels such as Black Saint, Hat Hut and Sound Aspects. In 1983 and 1989 they toured the Soviet Union (the former visit documented on SAXOPHONE DIPLOMACY, the latter on THIS TIME WE ARE BOTH while other projects have included albums with Braxton ( THE AGGREGATE) and electronics expert Alvin Curran ( ELECTRIC RAGS II) plus a record of Lacy tunes ( FAVORITE STREET). In 1986 they initiated a special concert series, PreEchoes, in the San Francisco area, in which the group commissioned and collaborated on pieces by composers from all genres of contemporary music: participants to date have included Braxton, Curran, Frith, Kaiser, Butch Morris, Terry Riley, Richard Teitelbaum and John Zorn. Although essentially an improvising group, ROVA's music is densely-textured and closely integrates composition with freer modes. Their music has often been influenced by literary sources—for example, the title-track of their double-set THE CROWD takes its name from Elias Canetti's book CROWDS AND POWER and a continuing series of pieces is called TROBAS CLUS after a spontaneous form of poetry sung by the medieval troubadours of southern France. In 1989 Steve Adams replaced Andrew Voigt in the quartet. Voigt has since recorded a duo album with Braxton ( KOL NIDRE) and Larry Ochs has guested on Chris Brown's THE ROOM.