Rova

Vince Kargatis · March-28th-2003, 09:13 AM

Giving this a generic title as a placeholder for any general Rova discussion.

However, my question is specific - have any audio recordings of the 25th Anniv. fest popped up yet for trade? I'm anxious to hear the concerts, and would enjoy any advance previews of hopefully future releases.

Haven't heard the new releases yet - next online order...

David Gitin · March-28th-2003, 09:18 AM

No, not that I know of, but Rova has RESISTANCE, new release from Victo, and their own CD-R of performances of works by Adams, Boisen, Goldberg, Raskin & Robair, ROVA LIVE, recorded '87-'02, available only to members of Rova Foundation (easily done: check their website for more info).

Paul B · March-28th-2003, 10:26 AM

x

mke · March-28th-2003, 04:27 PM

I know very little of ROVA, I only have one CD. But I saw them a few weeks ago and was blown away. No amplification, beautiful sound. Amazing.

ryans · April-3rd-2003, 12:29 PM

lets hear more about rova! i was lucky enough to see them in San Diego a few months ago. they are great fun live. Anymore reviews on their new records? is it just one on victo and a self released cdr?

Martin · April-3rd-2003, 12:35 PM

According to Larry Ochs, the new one on Black Saint has been delayed for some months due to financial restrictions.

ryans · April-3rd-2003, 08:23 PM

in an email catalogue from verge it looks like Rova contributed a track to the new Masada 'covers' record coming out on tzadik.

David Gitin · April-3rd-2003, 08:50 PM

Yes, they did, a tune arranged by Larry Ochs; the album is out and I've got it: VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS....well worth getting, a lot of variety interpreting Zorn tunes.

shrugs · May-3rd-2003, 09:23 AM

Fantastic performance here in Hartford last night. Everything is possible when dealing with these guys. From gorgeous passages to intense collective improv!
Every piece was amazing.

shrugs · May-3rd-2003, 11:02 AM

Yes! They also played Radar, Fred Frith's Water Under The Bridge, the John Zorn piece that he wrote for them, Larry Ochs' The Drift and more that I will remember later.

Vince Kargatis · July-24th-2003, 09:53 AM

So I got The Social/Science Set and noticed missing tracks from the original Science release, and that they were all the Henry Kaiser tracks - and Kaiser mastered the cd. So I emailed him, and got this perplexing explanation (no permission, but I think passing this on wouldn't be objectionable):

Quote:

It all would not fit on one CD
and it would not sell enough as a 2-CD
so I cut the things I was on
so that the other guys would not get mad at me for cutting things they were on......

Bummer! I wonder how compromised the sales would be with a double, particularly since the costs don't double. In any case, losing the Kaiser tracks irks me. I hope he can fit them on a future compilation of his, at some point.

Jason Bivins · July-25th-2003, 08:54 AM

Now that I've read through the STN piece on ROVA, it seems that 2 new releases are in the pipeline. One is the Black Saint release "Totally Spinning," which is supposed to be out already. Still no word on that, at least from what I've heard. The other is a release of (mostly) Satoko Fujii works on EWE, which sounds really exciting. Looks like the ROVA fanatics may have a good year!

Paul B · July-25th-2003, 10:36 AM

I've heard the Fujii stuff, and it's dynamite...Reminds me of Mingus for some reason: jazzy, dense interplay with the horns, and a killer rhythm section. Not sure when it will be available, though I would guess sometime this year.

Bye-ya.

shrugs · July-25th-2003, 10:38 AM

I keep hearing about the new STN but it hasn't made it to CT yet. Shit and I am only 6 hours at most from Burlington.

Captain Hate · July-27th-2003, 09:32 AM

Picked up Bingo in Montreal and just listened to it for the first time; outstanding renditions of songs by Lindsay Cooper, Fred Frith & Barry Guy, plus an excelllent song, Initials, by Ochs. Is anybody familiar with Witch Gong Game by Guy? There are two versions of it on this disk and they sound entirely different. Any insight to this? I'm sure that having some small familiarity with Guy's works that ample leeway for improvisation is expected.

Also why is this on Victo? I'm extremely naive when it comes to the ins and outs of releasing a disk; does a group like ROVA record something like this and then go shopping for a label or do they strike a deal with a label in advance and then fulfill it with subsequent tapes?

I'm very impressed with how ROVA has maintained such a high level of integrity in their releases for over two decades.

shrugs · July-27th-2003, 10:39 AM

Cap'n, I think Paul B. may have some insight into the Barry Guy track. I know Joe Christmas has seen some of his charts up close. Bingo was talked about over at the old boards. There was a review of it as well.
Get the lastest Signal To Noise for some great insight into ROVA.

Captain Hate · July-27th-2003, 11:11 AM

Thanks shrugs; I just finished reading the review thread from those thrilling days past when people used to post about music around here (believe me shrugs, I've tried). I should've checked there; after all it was released 5 years ago (I'm a bit behind). Glad to see that it was so well received.

Any idea why Andrew Voigt left the group; I did a search and saw that he's still playing around.

Uli · July-27th-2003, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Hate
I just finished reading the review thread from those thrilling days past when people used to post about music around here (believe me shrugs, I've tried).

Well, what can you do hateman? All the kids wanna talk about nowadays is the shiznit and that damn noise.

Other Steve · July-27th-2003, 02:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Hate
Thanks shrugs; I just finished reading the review thread from those thrilling days past when people used to post about music around here

Since I'm still a relative newcomer, would you care to elaborate on this statement? Seriously, I'm curious: What's missing? What do you want to see more of?

Quote:

Any idea why Andrew Voigt left the group; I did a search and saw that he's still playing around.

The STN article seemed to indicate, if I followed it correctly, that Voight was less than enchanted with the idea of the group collaborating with outside composers. There may also have been extramusical reasons. I was just wondering about Voight last night, after reading the STN piece and just before listening to As Was, What We Live's Especially the Traveller Tomorrow and Bruce Ackley's The Hearing.

+++++

Thanks, Vince, for the heads-up on Social/Science. Glad I hung onto the vinyl. I'm with you, though: Henry's logic isn't really sound here: I tend to think that anybody who's going to go for that set knows what he or she is getting into, and likely wouldn't balk at whatever extra amount is tacked onto the pricetag (and the economics certainly wouldn't dictate doubling the price, unless there's something I don't know about the royalty structure). On the contrary, now that I know there is material missing, it's extremely unlikely that I'll buy the CD.

Nate Dorward · July-27th-2003, 02:49 PM

Capt: There's a bit of the score reproduced in the booklet; but you can get a better idea of how the Witch Gong Game pieces work, I recall, from the liner notes to the companion piece, performed by the NOW Orchestra with Guy, on a Maya release, which also reproduces the full score in miniature. The completely different timings & sounds of the two realizations on the disc aren't surprising: think of a piece like Zorn's Cobra which has no set length or musical content. There actually are bits of more narrowly specified musical material in Guy's pieces but a lot of more abstractly specified sections.

Bingo is actually ROVA's 2nd release on Victo; there was an earlier one, Ptow!, so there was some kind of working relationship there already. The new one, Resistance, is quite strong too, though it's probably the toughest nut of the lot (except for the brilliant R&B-inflected Ochs piece "The Drift").

Actually, one curious thing I've noticed is how ROVA tends to polarize response: even serious fans/critics of avant-jazz seem split. Several critics I respect absolutely hated their performance at Victo this year, for some reason; I actually thought it one of the best gigs I attended.

Captain Hate · July-27th-2003, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Other Steve
Since I'm still a relative newcomer, would you care to elaborate on this statement? Seriously, I'm curious: What's missing? What do you want to see more of?

Going through that archived thread, it seemed like there were a lot more posters a lot more pumped up than you seem to find these days. Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe not. A couple of months ago shrugs admonished everyone to start posting more reviews. I tried to respond accordingly and it seemed like it produced no other response. A reasonable answer for that could be that my reviews aren't very good and don't contain much insight; but looking at the Bingo review is like looking at something that is not present now.

Not that there hasn't been a nice little flurry of activity on this thread.... Now I'm interested in your response: Does what I say make sense or am I off base?

Captain Hate · July-27th-2003, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nate Dorward
Actually, one curious thing I've noticed is how ROVA tends to polarize response: even serious fans/critics of avant-jazz seem split. Several critics I respect absolutely hated their performance at Victo this year, for some reason; I actually thought it one of the best gigs I attended.

Thanks for the earlier info. Did any of these critics give any specifics? How can you hate a ROVA performance? I've only seen them once (at least 10 years ago) and it was outstanding.

Nate Dorward · July-27th-2003, 04:33 PM

One person I talked to simply thought the gig loud, relentless & lacking in any emotional content. I don't know exactly what Kurt Gottschalk thought of it but it's notable that in an otherwise blow-by-blow review of Victo this year for Squid's Ear he simply inserts a passing reference to the gig in a single sentence, despite being present in the audience.

Jason Bivins · July-27th-2003, 06:51 PM

Since Voigt's activities were mentioned, let me just give props to a current trio he's in called Numinous Opossum. The band includes Voigt, bassist Morgan Guberman, and my man Ian Davis on percussion. Umbrella is releasing a cd in the very near future, and the trio will be out on the road in September. I'll post the itinerary when I get it. It's really really good music.

Other Steve · July-27th-2003, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Hate
Not that there hasn't been a nice little flurry of activity on this thread.... Now I'm interested in your response: Does what I say make sense or am I off base?

You may well be right, Cap... I don't know. Ever since I've been around, the board has been much like it appears now, except that the functionality has been vastly improved, of course. There always seem to be little pockets of considered conversation hidden amongst large swathes of "Here's what just flitted through my head a minute ago."

I tend not to spend much time in the Alley for that reason, unless I've got a burning non-jazz query to post (like my Haino post from earlier this evening). In the spirit of quid pro quo, I'll also check the Alley from time to time to see if there are any similar queries from others that I might contribute to.

I haven't had time to offer many CD reviews lately, though I did uncork that monster of a live review a while back. I do read both forums with some interest. The forum I read more than any other is "What Are You Listening To." And, of course, there's ususally a fair amount of substantive discussion going on in the "electro-acoustic improvisation" thread, but then, I know that's not to everyone's taste.

As for Rova in specific, it's good to see the discussion fired up; I haven't been able to contribute much, but it (and the STN piece) has made me want to go out to get their latest disc. Maybe the lack stems from people not having tracked down the new releases yet? Dunno.

Anyway, it's interesting for me to read that you and others feel this was once a more substantive place. Makes me wonder what I missed. And you should certainly not belittle your own efforts at stirring things up.

Jason, thanks for the Voight tip -- with Guberman and Davis, how could that not be of interest? I'll keep an eye out.

MRS · September-11th-2003, 12:18 PM

. . .picked up my first disc, 'Bingo' in at Amoeba in SF a month back after hearing many raves. This is a magisterial date, as I will never forget listening to it for the first time atop the home I was residing in Russian Hill. The second selection, the sole Ochs composition, is devastating. Can anyone tell me who takes the first, longer solo, I believe on alto? It is one of the most compelling saxophone solos I've heard in some time.

Vince Kargatis · September-11th-2003, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Michael Schaumann
. . .picked up my first disc, 'Bingo' [...] The second selection, the sole Ochs composition, is devastating. Can anyone tell me who takes the first, longer solo, I believe on alto? It is one of the most compelling saxophone solos I've heard in some time.

I don't have Bingo with me, but I assume that the alto solo is Steve Adams, who I find a cogent soloist. It's possibly Jon Raskin, but he's usually on bari.

Uli · September-11th-2003, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jason Bivins
Since Voigt's activities were mentioned, let me just give props to a current trio he's in called Numinous Opossum. The band includes Voigt, bassist Morgan Guberman, and my man Ian Davis on percussion. Umbrella is releasing a cd in the very near future, and the trio will be out on the road in September. I'll post the itinerary when I get it. It's really really good music.

For those interested in Chi-town, the group is playing tonite at 3030.

Jason Bivins · September-11th-2003, 01:22 PM

Thanks for posting that, Uli. Ian never sent me the itinerary, else I'd have posted it, but the disc is out now on Umbrella. It's called "Find the Furrow and Bury Your Head."

Rob C · February-12th-2004, 02:04 PM

Uli, did they play 3030 in addition to the Cultural Center? Or did you just mean the Cultural Center?

I caught the CCC show last night, first time I've heard them at all, and was pretty impressed (though I have to admit, no matter how many horn-only solos, duos or bands I hear, I like a rhythm section). I particularly liked Ochs. Is Bingo the consensus "first disc" to get from them?