Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Rova Saxophone Quartet at Barking Legs
The Rova Saxophone Quartet, celebrating 40 years of exploring the synthesis of composition, collective improvisation and genre-bending music, will perform Monday, March 19, at Barking Legs Theater.
Rova is renowned as one of the longest-standing groups in the music movement that has its roots in post-bop, free jazz, avant-rock and 20th-century new music, and draws inspiration from the visual arts and traditional and popular music styles of Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States.
The show is being presented by the Shaking Ray Levi Society and Contemporary Performings Arts of Chattanooga, a nonprofit that promotes performing arts at Barking Legs Theater.
“Rova is absolutely extraordinary, and the group is now 40 years into a truly historic run,” says Bruce Kaplan with CoPac and Barking Legs.
The Penguin Guide calls the all-saxophone ensemble “a regular and conceptually wide-ranging unit,” whose music is “a teeming cosmos of saxophone sounds” created by “deliberately eschewing conventional notions about swing [and] prodding at the boundaries of sound and space…”
The group draws from a broad spectrum of musical influences including Charles Ives, Edgard Varese, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman to The Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Coltrane, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman.
Rova began in 1978, writing new material, touring and recording, the latter including early collaborations with such like-minded colleagues as guitarists Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and saxophonist John Zorn. Also in its early years, Rova shared the stage in collab- orations with fellow San Francisco-based trailblazers Kronos Quartet and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. A 1983 tour of the USSR and accompanying PBS documentary highlighted the first five years of Rova’s existence.
In 1985, the Rova Saxophone Quartet incorporated as the not-for-profit organization Rova: Arts. Founding member Andrew Voigt left Rova in August 1988 and was replaced by Steve Adams. Steve Adams replaced original member Andrew Voigt in 1988, joining Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin and Bruce Ackley, meaning the group has remained largely intact for much of its time together.