Four decades into their project, the SF Bay Area saxophone quartet ROVA of Bruce Ackley (soprano & tenor), Steve Adams (alto & sopranino), Larry Ochs (tenor) and Jon Raskin (baritone) continue expanding their magnificent repertoire with original compositions, collective improvisations, and a piece from Glenn Spearman (Cecil Taylor, Double Trio) arranged by Larry Ochs.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2021 Country: USA Packaging: Digipack Recorded at New, Improved Recording, in Oakland, California, on June 22nd, 2018, September 23rd, 2018 and July 1st, 2019, by John Finkbeiner.
"After 40-plus years in action, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet has mastered and reinvented the sound of four varied saxophones working together, individually and toward some "X" factor collective voice. That unique legacy gains further proof of vision and forward motion on its new project on ESP.
Covering a range of tools in the saxophonic toolbox/palette, the combined forces of Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Larry Ochs and Jon Raskin offer up six tracks, bristling with the characteristic mesh of free play (often group improvisation versus soloing) and taut structural passages. Additional saxophonic reference comes in the form of homages to the late Glenn Spearman (who shared with ROVA a San Francisco Bay Area grounding). An Ochs-arranged version of Spearman's "The Extrapolation" opens the album, which closes with Adams' muscular elegy "The Enumeration," dedicated to Spearman. Keeping options and concepts open and subject to change is a long-running ROVA mandate, as evidenced here by two very different versions of the tune "NC 17," by turns atmospheric and antic.
While essentially operating under the aegis of jazz, nebulous though that moniker can be, ROVA incorporates aspects of modernist harmony and rhythm - shades of Messiaen, Bartók and unraveled Ravel, for instance - and swing-free minimalist kinetics, reminding us of the saxophone's original intention as a "classical" instrument (an intention that never fully came to fruition). Here, "Xenophobia" and the title track, "The Circumference Of Reason," assert chamber-like frameworks, interlaced with solo outings.
In all, Circumference teems with the stuff that makes ROVA an important institution, including locomotion, abstraction and a particular avant-reedy glory of its own devising."-Josef Woodard, Downbeat Magazine
"Despite the obvious obstacles, this singular San Francisco Bay Area band is staying on mission, moving forward. Over its four-plus decades, the quartet has defined itself by applying an array of improvisational strategies to an ever-expanding body of new music.
The Circumference of Reason includes six tracks composed or, in the case of the piece "NC17," designed between 2011 and 2016. Then - in typical ROVA fashion - the pieces were worked over and performed by the quartet in rehearsals and concerts until perceived to be ready for recording. They include an arrangement of a Glenn Spearman piece as well as a piece by Steve Adams dedicated to Glenn; the playing on both inspired by that expressive saxophonist's spirited personality and playing.
As well, this recording features two distinctly different versions of NC17, another in the series of ROVA's structured-improvisations, all of which have been designed using an ever-expanding set of visual and aural cues that the quartet has invented, or borrowed and adapted. On its face, "NC17" is simply a specific set of conceptual options to cue in, in any order, and to then explore, populating the spontaneously chosen series of cued events with immersive music/sounds/energies etc. The group creates a palpable sonic architecture for each new performance of the piece. Even as we write this, we can say that the takes of "NC17" you will hear on this CD are unique; no one take of "NC17" can be exactly the same as any other take of "NC17."
"ROVA performances can reach the soaring lyrical intensity of bel canto, the rough-and-tumble tumult of a garage rock band, or the insistently patterned matrix of a minimalist chamber work." So wrote Andrew Gilbert in 2018. The piece from which the CD's title comes, The Circumference of Reason, is a good example of a minimalist piece when penned by a ROVA composer, in this case Steve Adams."-ESP-Disk
"The San Francisco-based Rova Saxophone Quartet has been active since 1977, creating timbre-concentrated music that, typically following defined structures, finds ample room for improvisation. The four technically brilliant members of the ensemble - Jon Raskin, Steve Adams, Bruce Ackley and Larry Ochs - are known for their wide range approach, rhythmic inventiveness and intriguing arrangements, which incorporate a variety of tone colors.
On this new album, The Circumference of Reason, they opt for less cathartic grooves and a more self-possessed posture that achieves better outcomes on the opening and closing tracks, curiously both related to the late American free jazz saxophonist Glenn Spearman. The former cut, "The Extrapolation of the Inevitable", is one of his compositions, presenting synchronized angular melodies and extemporaneous concessions as parts of Ochs' competent arrangement; the latter number, "The Enumeration", is Adam's dedication to Spearman, where a solid horn-consummated background sustains fierce improvisation, and well-aligned collective passages take advantage of winding counterpoint.
The group harnesses its privileged communication, deepening the dialogues spontaneously on the two versions of "NC17". The Version 1 seeks hybrid states by infusing atmospheric ostinatos, drones and casual blows whose repose is occasionally disturbed by muscular incursions, percussive techniques and multiphonic grumbles. In turn, Version 2 is busier at the outset - including squawking cacophony and a pulsating baritone - before becoming whisperingly lost in thought. The tension returns in bursts for the final section, and the persistent ebb and flow that characterizes their pieces doesn't apply to the minimalist title track, a limbo of hushed, disperse sounds that left me lightly somnolent.
This mildly enjoyable Rova still provides some moments of fascinating horn interplay."-Filipe Freitas, Jazz Trail