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Album Review

Rova Orkestrova: No Favorites!

Read "No Favorites!" reviewed by Troy Collins


Ever since its formation in 1977, Rova, the pioneering West Coast saxophone quartet, has been augmenting its ranks to explore structured improvisation. No Favorites! pays homage to Lawrence D. “Butch" Morris, the inventor of Conduction, a revolutionary system for organizing large-ensemble improvisation using coded gestures. This ambitious album epitomizes a working relationship that Rova began with Morris in 1988, while also reflecting parallel working methods reaching back to the mid-1970s. Building on previous efforts in this milieu, the saxophone quartet ...

288
Album Review

Rova: Totally Spinning

Read "Totally Spinning" reviewed by Jeff Stockton


Depending on your preference among saxophone quartets, Rova (comprised of Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Bruce Ackley and Steve Adams) and the World Saxophone Quartet would have to rank numbers 1 and 1A. Rova has always been perceived as the more avant-garde of the two, more prone to explorations of abstract sound, closer in spirit (and practice) to Coltrane's Ascension than Ellington. Ten years ago, however, when Totally Spinning was recorded, Rova was at its most lyrical. Sure, ...

128
Album Review

ROVA Orkestrova: Electric Ascension

Read "Electric Ascension" reviewed by Kurt Gottschalk


Electing to interpret for the second time John Coltrane's seminal free jazz blowout Ascension was an odd move for West Coast sax quartet Rova to make on the band's 25th anniversary in 2003. Their motives aside, what it amounted to was restaging one of the band's least interesting records--based on a morass as individual as a fingerprint to begin with--and adding eight guests who toted along samplers, turntables, and violins. It would seem to hold about as much interest as ...

295
Multiple Reviews

Rova: John Coltrane's Ascension & Electric Ascension

Read "Rova: John Coltrane's Ascension & Electric Ascension" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


“There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine: new feelings to get at. And always, there is a need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen, the essence--the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to ...

321
Album Review

ROVA::Orkestrova: Electric Ascension: An Interpretation of John Coltrane's Ascension

Read "Electric Ascension: An Interpretation of John Coltrane's Ascension" reviewed by John Kelman


When John Coltrane put together five saxophonists, two trumpets, two basses, piano, and drums to record Ascension forty years ago, his decision would polarize the jazz world. To fans of the more traditional forms from which Coltrane emerged, the two versions of the composition--and, as free as it was, it was a composition--represented something akin to musical blasphemy. To listeners with a less rigid definition of what jazz was--and, more importantly, with a view of what it could be--the recording ...

152
Album Review

ROVA: As Was

Read "As Was" reviewed by Derek Taylor


Saxophone quartets are no longer the radical innovation they once were. Groups like The Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet and The Brooklyn Saxophone Quartet among others have appropriated the mantle originally carved out by ensembles like ROVA and the World Saxophone Quartet and in the process made the instrumentation a far more commonplace occurrence. But back in 1981 when As Was was first released ROVA and the WSQ were essentially the only ensembles on the block willing throw their creative ...

186
Album Review

Rova: Morphological Echo

Read "Morphological Echo" reviewed by Robert Spencer


Morphological Echo, the Rova saxophone quartet's twentieth-anniversary release consists of a 1989 New Year's Eve recording and one track from 1992. The 1989 piece is the bravura “Maintaining the Web Under Less Than Obvious Circumstances," a six-part meta-suite which takes up 32 of this disc's 47 minutes. Rova's strengths are deployed here to dazzling effect: top-notch instrumentalism, passionate intensity and quiet fire, extraordinarily subtle and skillful ensemble passages. Individual voices emerge, combine with others, separate out again, and melt back ...

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1

Interview

Interview: Ada Rovatti

Interview: Ada Rovatti

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Saxophonist Ada Rovatti and trumpeter Randy Brecker have been wife and husband since 2001. The pair met in 1996 when Randy traveled to Italy to perform with a local jazz band there. Ada was responsible for bringing him the music and talking him through how the concert would roll. As she told me below, it was love at first sight. Now, Ada has a new album out, her seventh: The Hidden World of Piloo. Ada wrote the words and music ...

2

Recording

Singer-Percussionist-Guitarist Nanny Assis Presents A Panorama Of Brazilian & Jazz Musical Styles On 'Rovanio: The Music Of Nanny Assis,' Set For June 23 Release By In+Out Records

Singer-Percussionist-Guitarist Nanny Assis Presents A Panorama Of Brazilian & Jazz Musical Styles On 'Rovanio: The Music Of Nanny Assis,' Set For June 23 Release By In+Out Records

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Nanny Assis proves his aptitude for many musical styles and concepts on Rovanio: The Music of Nanny Assis, to be released June 23 on the German jazz label, In+Out Records. Assis’s second album as a leader, it showcases not just his versatility but his love for collaboration, with appearances by a full twenty guest artists—including such esteemed figures as Ron Carter, Randy Brecker, Chico Pinheiro, and Janis Siegel. Simply put, Rovanio (ro-VAH-nee-oh) is Assis’s real first name. ...

3

Recording

Husband & Wife Team of Randy Brecker and Ada Rovatti Join Forces on New CD Brecker Plays Rovatti: Sacred Bond

Husband & Wife Team of Randy Brecker and Ada Rovatti Join Forces on New CD Brecker Plays Rovatti: Sacred Bond

Source: hubtone PR

Here’s a saying that ‘the family that plays together, stays together.’ That old adage is put into effect on Brecker Plays Rovatti: Sacred Bond, which not only features the husband and wife team of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter and fusion pioneer Randy Brecker and saxophonist-composer Ada Rovatti but also includes their 10-year-old daughter Stella in a vocal cameo appearance on one track. Backed by a versatile core group of pianist David Kikoski, bassist Alex Claffy and drummer Rodney Holmes, with guest ...

1

Interview

Alisa Gurova Implements Belly Dancing Techniques In Jazz Performance

Alisa Gurova Implements Belly Dancing Techniques In Jazz Performance

Source: Harry Watters

As a performer of tribal dance, Ms. Alisa Gurova has showcased her work internationally from festivals in Italy (the Umrah Festival and Tribal Trip); the Czech Republic (Let's Dance Festival); her native Ukraine (several festivals in cities across the country); and Russia (Gala Show).  She has been a unique marvel in the dance world as she engages not only typical belly dance movements and isolations (chest circles, undulations, snake arms, shimmy, etc.), but also movements of legs, feet, pirouettes, jumps ...

Performance / Tour

Jazz This Week: Jim Pugh, Jeremy Haynes, Amina Figarova, Jazz St. Louis Gala, Jeff Coffin, Chris Botti, Dan Thomas, and More

Jazz This Week: Jim Pugh, Jeremy Haynes, Amina Figarova, Jazz St. Louis Gala, Jeff Coffin, Chris Botti, Dan Thomas, and More

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

There's jazz and creative music happening early and often throughout this week in St. Louis, and so to help make sure that you don't miss anything, here's a special early edition of the weekly highlights post: Tonight, trombonist Jim Pugh is in town for a free concert at at Maryville University presented by the St. Louis Low Brass Collective. Pugh is best known for his work with Woody Herman and Chick Corea, but also has been a top studio trombonist ...

Video / DVD

STLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Amina Figarova's Jazz Journey

STLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Amina Figarova's Jazz Journey

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

St. Louis jazz fans this year already have been able to hear the local debuts of several noteworthy musicians, and there's another one coming next week who's made a long journey, both physically and culturally, to get to where she is now. We're speaking of pianist and composer Amina Figarova, who will be in St. Louis with her sextet to perform a free concert this coming Thursday, February 21 for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University. Figarova, 46, ...

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Performance / Tour

Internationally Renowned Pianist/Composer Amina Figarova Celebrates New CD Twelve With 12-City U.S. Tour, May 3-18

Internationally Renowned Pianist/Composer Amina Figarova Celebrates New CD Twelve With 12-City U.S. Tour, May 3-18

Source: Braithwaite & Katz Communications

Twelve to be released May 1 on German In + Out label Tour Dates May 3-18 in New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland Heights, NYC, Albuquerque, NM; Fresno, Bakersfield, Half Moon Bay, CA; Seattle, WA; Missoula, MT; Portland, OR; Pittsburgh, PA “A skilled and imaginative composer…Born in Azerbaijan and based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Figarova brings a remarkably broad range of influences to her works, which may help explain their appeal. You can hear the influence of her classical training in the care ...

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Opinion

A Stamp of Approval for Jazz

A Stamp of Approval for Jazz

Source: Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes

We're a society of pack rats, of collectors. Or so it seems. Some of us collect a few things we find meaningful, others have made it into a warehouse-style art form. In general, jazz fans collect live music memories and savor the special moments. Many collect them in hard copy as well—CDs, LPs, 78s, images. You name it. Well, probably not eight-tracks. At least now without suffering some level of derision. But collect we do. When I was a kid, ...

150

Recording

Rova Saxophone Quartet - Planetary (2011)

Rova Saxophone Quartet - Planetary (2011)

Source: Something Else!

By S. Victor Aaron Imagine a conversation with three other people where topic...a theme if you will...is selected and all four of you are to converse on that topic at certain points in time. And then at other times, a random topic is chosen, but everyone has to be conversing on topic together. And the topics can change on the fly, several times, before returning the the original, complex “theme" topic. I'm trying my darnedest to describe the knotty song ...

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Recording

In Breve (1): Iyer, Kilgore, Willis, Figarova, Caliman-Christlieb

In Breve (1): Iyer, Kilgore, Willis, Figarova, Caliman-Christlieb

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

Jazz is dying? Ha. The stacks of evidence on my office floor say otherwise. Here you see a few of the recent arrivals. As I may have mentioned, it is impossible to keep up with this stuff. No matter how many listening hours the reviewer carves out of the day, they can never be enough. Selectivity is a necessity. In this installment of the never-ending attempt to stay abreast, here are the Rifftides staff's impressions of a few more or ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

No Favorites!

New World Records
2016

buy

Totally Spinning

Black Saint
2006

buy

Electric Ascension:...

Atavistic Records
2005

buy

Electric Ascension

Atavistic Records
2005

buy

As Was

Atavistic Records
2001

buy

Morphological Echo

Rastascan Records
1998

buy

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