Biography
The experimental jazz currents of the 1960s and 1970s opened pathways for instrumental combinations once considered outside the norm. Traditional modern-jazz configurations built around horn, piano, bass, and drums lost their prescriptive hold, prompting players to pursue unfamiliar timbres and textures. Ornette Coleman’s groups dispensed with piano entirely, while Cecil Taylor’s trio of Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray removed the bass; Chicago AACM ensembles sometimes stripped away one or more rhythm-section roles, as seen in the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s earliest lineup that lacked a drummer.
Ensembles limited to identical instruments therefore emerged as a logical development. The World Saxophone Quartet’s arrival in the late 1970s popularized the all-saxophone format, and the San Francisco-based Rova Saxophone Quartet was established almost simultaneously. Though it never matched the WSQ’s commercial reach, Rova became the second-most prominent group of its type and arguably the most exploratory. Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Andrew Voigt, and Bruce Ackley formed Rova in October 1977; its debut performance took place at Mills College in Oakland the following February. From the outset the quartet stood apart: rooted in free jazz yet openly engaged with twentieth-century concert music, it drew acknowledged inspiration from Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, and Edgard Varèse alongside jazz figures such as John Coltrane, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, and Ornette Coleman. The group’s first recording, Cinema Rovaté, appeared in 1978 on Ochs’s Metalanguage imprint. More than two dozen subsequent albums have been issued on Black Saint, New Albion, Sound Aspects, and hatART.
Rova has toured extensively. In 1983 it became the first American new-music ensemble to visit the then-Soviet Union; PBS later broadcast a documentary of the journey. The following year the Ganelin Trio, hosted by Rova, became the first Soviet jazz group to perform in the United States, appearing at the band’s Pre-Echoes series of collaborative concerts that later featured John Zorn, Braxton, and Terry Riley. Andrew Voigt departed in 1988 and was succeeded by Steve Adams. Since 1985 Rova has operated as a registered not-for-profit, enabling commissions of new works and sustained advocacy for contemporary music. Its repertoire incorporates serial procedures, cue-card game pieces, rock elements, and free improvisation, unified only by a consistent refusal of cliché.
Ensembles limited to identical instruments therefore emerged as a logical development. The World Saxophone Quartet’s arrival in the late 1970s popularized the all-saxophone format, and the San Francisco-based Rova Saxophone Quartet was established almost simultaneously. Though it never matched the WSQ’s commercial reach, Rova became the second-most prominent group of its type and arguably the most exploratory. Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Andrew Voigt, and Bruce Ackley formed Rova in October 1977; its debut performance took place at Mills College in Oakland the following February. From the outset the quartet stood apart: rooted in free jazz yet openly engaged with twentieth-century concert music, it drew acknowledged inspiration from Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, and Edgard Varèse alongside jazz figures such as John Coltrane, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, and Ornette Coleman. The group’s first recording, Cinema Rovaté, appeared in 1978 on Ochs’s Metalanguage imprint. More than two dozen subsequent albums have been issued on Black Saint, New Albion, Sound Aspects, and hatART.
Rova has toured extensively. In 1983 it became the first American new-music ensemble to visit the then-Soviet Union; PBS later broadcast a documentary of the journey. The following year the Ganelin Trio, hosted by Rova, became the first Soviet jazz group to perform in the United States, appearing at the band’s Pre-Echoes series of collaborative concerts that later featured John Zorn, Braxton, and Terry Riley. Andrew Voigt departed in 1988 and was succeeded by Steve Adams. Since 1985 Rova has operated as a registered not-for-profit, enabling commissions of new works and sustained advocacy for contemporary music. Its repertoire incorporates serial procedures, cue-card game pieces, rock elements, and free improvisation, unified only by a consistent refusal of cliché.
Albums
Eyes On Me
2025
The Celestial Septet
2010
The Works - Volume 5
1999
The Works - Volume 4
1996
From The Bureau Of Both
1993
Favorite Street
1984
Singles
