Rova Saxophone Quartet

The 1960s and 1970s experimental jazz climate opened pathways for atypical instrumental configurations. The standard horn-piano-bass-drums format that had defined the modern jazz period lost its grip as players pursued novel timbres. Ornette Coleman’s groups dispensed with piano entirely, while Cecil Taylor’s trio featuring Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray removed the bass. Chicago’s AACM affiliates sometimes discarded part or all of the rhythm section, a choice exemplified by the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s initial lineup, which operated without a drummer.

Groups built around identical instruments therefore emerged as a logical next step. Once the World Saxophone Quartet appeared in the late 1970s, all-saxophone ensembles gained traction. Formed in San Francisco at virtually the same moment, the Rova Saxophone Quartet never matched the WSQ’s commercial reach yet became the second most prominent band of its type and arguably the most daring. Rova was established in October 1977 by Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Andrew Voigt, and Bruce Ackley, giving its debut performance at Mills College in Oakland the following February.

From its inception the quartet stood apart. Although rooted in free jazz, its members openly drew from twentieth-century concert music, citing Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, and Edgard Varése 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 across the globe. In 1983 it became the first American new-music ensemble to visit the Soviet Union, an event later documented in a PBS film. Three years afterward the Ganelin Trio became the first Soviet jazz group to perform in the United States when Rova hosted it during the Pre-Echoes series of collaborative concerts, a program that later featured John Zorn, Braxton, and Terry Riley. Voigt departed in 1988 and was succeeded by Steve Adams.

Since 1985 Rova has functioned as a registered not-for-profit organization, allowing it to commission new compositions and advance the cause of contemporary music. Its work incorporates serial techniques, cue-card game pieces, rock textures, and free improvisation, united only by a consistent refusal of cliché.