(Free Jazz, Free Improvisation) Rova Saxophone Quartet - Favorite Street / Rova plays Lacy - 1984, FLAC (tracks+.cue) lossless

The Rova Saxophone Quartet’s unique style extends the boundaries of traditional jazz. Because their lineup consists of four saxophonists—baritone, tenor, alto, and sopranino—their music redefines the rhythmic role usually given to percussion, bass, and piano, a task they fulfill with a great sense of adventure and inventiveness. The group is a celebrated force in North America and Europe and a favorite attraction on the jazz festival circuit. “Our intention was to create original voice,” member Larry Ochs explained to Chicago Tribune contributor John Litweiler, “the way an individual saxophonist wants to create an original voice.”
In the course of two decades Rova has built an impressive body of work comprised of original compositions and special commissions, as well as arrangements of modern avant-garde, jazz, and classical music. Additionally, the Rova Saxophone Quartet has collaborated with some of the best-known contemporary musicians, among them Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, John Zorn, Steve Lacy, Terry Riley, Robin Holcomb, Butch Morris, Fred Frith, and the string ensemble the Kronos Quartet. Like Rova, the Kronos Quartet also emphasizes the works of living composers.
The Rova Saxophone Quartet formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in the autumn of 1977, compiling its name from the initials of its founding members’surnames: Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Andrew Voigt (replaced by Steve Adams in 1988), and Bruce Ackley. They originally joined forces to perform at the third annual Free Music Festival at Mills College in Oakland, California, in February of 1978, but decided to make the project an ongoing effort after hearing the concert tapes. Soon thereafter, the group recorded their debut album, Cinema Rovaté, then in November gave their first major tour performance in Canada for the Vancouver New Music Society.
In May of 1979, after performing at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, where they opened for the band Air, the quartet traveled overseas for their first European festival, the Moers International Festival of New Jazz in Germany. They also made concert appearances in Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Nickelsdorf (Austria), Nyon (Switzerland), and New York City.
The next year Rova participated in the Metalanguage Festival of Improvised Music alongside such artists as Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser, Toshinori Kondo, and Greg Goodman at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Taking a break from the tour, the group recorded As Was in April of 1981 at the 1750 Arch Studios in Berkeley, California. In November of that year they appeared in performance with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. In February of 1982 John Adams commissioned the piece Trobar Clus # 10 (The Crowd) for the San Francisco Symphony’s New + Unusual Music Series.
The next year, 1983, proved an important one for Rova. In June they became the first American new music group to tour the Soviet Union. The trip was documented on film as Saxophone Diplomacy (also released as a boxed-set recording), which aired on public television stations across the United States. Rova returned to the U.S.S.R. in November of 1989, resulting in the compact disc This Time We Are Both.
“Our music has always been on the brink of entering a new stage whenever we’ve gone to the Soviet Union,” Ochs reflected in a 1992 interview with Bill Shoemaker of Down Beat magazine. “Saxophone Diplomacy marked the end of the earliest stage in ‘83, when we did music with a lot of energy, what we called our rock & roll stuff. By the time we went back in ‘89, we had recorded The Crowd and Beat Kennel, where we tightened up the written material, and, by then, Steve Adams had come in, and the ensemble sound got better, and the rhythmic stuff got stronger.”

For this interesting set, ROVA perform seven Steve Lacy compositions. Lacy's scalar works, which include "The Dumps," "Moon" and "Snips," are ideal for the saxophone quartet, who really dig beneath the surface and understand the pieces, as Lacy has always understood Thelonious Monk. Lacy's thoughtful brand of freedom, the variety found in these originals (which range from swing to purposely rhythmically wooden melodies), and with the inventive rearranging by ROVA make this a continually surprising, colorful and adventurous set.