Paying homage to one of the most original creators in improvised music, Lawrence 'Butch' Morris, the Bay Area Rova Quartet is expanded into an orchestra with an impressive set of improvisers in three works that balance compositional approaches with improvisation through conduction.
Label: New World Records Catalog ID: NW 80782CD Squidco Product Code: 22964
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2016 Country: USA Packaging: Digipack Recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkley, California on July 1st, 2015 by Adam Munoz.
"No Favorites pays homage to one of the most original creators in improvised music, Lawrence 'Butch' Morris (1947-2013), inventor of Conduction, a method for organizing large-ensemble improvisation that he took to the world. The program represents a working relationship that Rova began with Morris in 1988 and also reflects parallel working processes reaching back to the mid-1970s. Rova do more than simply pay tribute. The quartet's members build on their own work in structured improvisation, incorporate other methods of organization -- from graphic scores to conventional notation -- and expand their palette from the saxophone quartet to include a string quartet and an electric power trio. Extending the possibilities of large-ensemble improvisation, the combined groups create music of both depth and an ever changing surface, the fruit of both intense commitment and a highly creative, heterodox methodology. Like previous Rova expansions, it achieves complex music that both requiresand rewards active listening. Each of the three extended pieces here includes a high degree of improvisation while embodying different compositional principles, the first and third (Nothing Stopped / But a Future and Contours of the Glass Head) employing conduction, the second graphic notation and simultaneity."-New World