• Increased Bay Area concert schedule, presenting both quartet and collaborative events
• Completion of post-production for our quartet studio-based recording project
• Studio recording of our 2018 collaborations with Thollem, Dohee Lee and Wobbly
• Explore collaboration projects proposed by community artists
• Compose and develop new works for the quartet

Saturday, February 15, 8:00 PM

Rova + Myra Melford 

Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus
(On Bancroft, near College Avenue)

Compositions by Myra Melford, Steve Adams and Jon Raskin for this quintet of Rova plus Myra Melford, and Myra Melford plus Rova.

All pieces will be premieres.

Sunday March 29, 8:00 PM

Rova Plays San Francisco 

Rova plays new works in San Francisco. In the coming months the quartet will be creating and rehearsing compositions by band members which will premiere at Center for New Music. Our intention is to have a higher local profile in order to make new work and to expand our audience for adventurous blends of improvisation and composition. Join us!

Center for New Music

hatOLOGOY 721

SAXOPHONE DIPLOMACY

Two weeks after our so-called president’s 2018 “summit meeting” with V. Putin in Finland, we got a call from Swiss producer Werner Uehlinger, owner of the long-standing Hat Hut recording label, wondering what we thought of re-releasing Saxophone Diplomacy, recorded live in the USSR in 1983. Coincidence? We may never know. This USSR recording occurred at a time when the Republican President Reagan and all his Republican friends (and many others) referred to the USSR as “The Evil Empire.” Rova and the music fans in the city then known as Leningrad (who helped organize a six city tour) were on a different wavelength from the politicians of 1983, just as we are now. True cultural exchange occurred. And this moving music was part of that. 

Mentioned as one of the best re-releases of 2019 in UK’s Jazz Journal, you can go to the Rova Saxophone Quartet - Bandcamp page to order the CD.

Thursday, January 23, 8:00 PM 

Larry Ochs – Kjell Nordeson Duo

Center for New Music

Thursday, January 23rd and Thursday, January 30th

Raskin / Brown / Tarasov / Hoopes Quartet

January 23rd, 8:00 PM
Gold Lion Arts 

January 30^th, 7:30 PM
Center for New Music

Saturday, January 25th, 8:00 PM

Jon Raskin Solo Baritone Saxophone

Steve Lacy's Practitioner: Book P 
Also appearing: VLP Trio: Steuart Liebig / Garth Powell / Michael Vlatkovich

Gold Lion Arts 

Thursday, January 30th, 8:00 PM  

STEVE ADAMS + JOHN HAYNES 

Steve Adams – laptop
John Hanes – laptop
Also appearing - Mit Darm - Edward Schocker (glass/shō) and Suki O’Kane (electronics).

Luggage Store Gallery

Saturday and Sunday, February 1st and 2nd 

Do-Over Music Series #14: The duo. B. Experimental Band plays Anthony Braxton

A large ensemble led by Chris Jonas

As part of a world-wide series of Braxton75 events, the duo B. Experimental band celebrates the music, life and enduring influence of visionary composer, bandleader, multi-instrumentalist and musical thinker Anthony Braxton in an all-Braxton program led by Santa Fe saxophonist, community organizer and Braxton collaborator Chris Jonas. The duo B. Experimental Band, co-led by bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and drummer Jason Levis, explores the rich terrain where composition and improvisation meet. The 13-15-piece ensemble, which has a core personnel that varies slightly from performance to performance, was founded in December 2018, and performs every-other-month at Temescal Arts Center in Oakland. The band will expand to 27 for these special performances.

Participants include Lisa Mezzacappa, Jason Levis, gabby fluke-mogul, Polly M. Springhorn, Steve Adams, Ian Carey, Bruce Ackley, Kevin CK Lo, Brett Carson, Suki O'Kane, Jordan Glenn, Tom Weeks, Juan Hernandez, Kasey Knudsen, Michael Zelner, Rae Condry, John Finkbeiner, Randy McKean, Dan Plonsey, Ron Heglin, Kjell Nordeson, Cory Wright, Safa Shokrai, Dillon Vado, Daniel Goldberg and others.

Saturday, February 1st, 8:30 PM
Temescal Arts Center

Sunday, February 2nd, 4:30 PM
The California Jazz Conservatory

February 7, 8 at 8:00PM, and February 9 at 2:00PM

Just Ahead is Darkness 

Sharp & Fine presents Just Ahead is Darkness - Sharp & Fine's newest “play for dance.” A devised work for six performers and four musicians, Just Ahead is Darkness draws on the Japanese and Japanese-American tradition of remembering the dead to tell a poignant and magical tale about family, love, loss, and the eternal return of ghosts.

Music by Cory Wright with:

Cory Wright - woodwinds
Steve Adams - woodwinds
Karl Evangelista - guitar
Jordan Glenn - drums

Z Space

Saturday, February 8th, 6:00 PM

The Art of the Skatch

Tom Nunn’s homemade instrument, the Skatchbox

A gallery show opening presented by T.D. Skatchit, celebrating the 10 year Anniversary of Skatch showcasing Tom Nunn's Skatchboxes, Skatchwheels and featuring Skatchart. A new film document, Skatch Dance will also be running as part of the exhibition.

T.D. Skatchit - Tom Nunn and David Michalak, skatchboxes
Bruce Ackley - saxophones
Christina Braun - dance


Sherman Street Studios

There will be refreshments.
The gallery show runs through February.
FREE

Monday, February 17th, 7:30 PM

Ochs / Houle / Merkey / Perkis

The great Canadian clarinetist François Houle joins local magicians Larry Ochs, Madalyn Merkey and Tim Perkis for this quartet's only Bay Area appearance. The local trio reconvenes for their 3rd concert in the past 5 months. The hope here: to combine improvising sensibilities, setting each other up time and again to capitalize on intuited structures which in turn give rare and meaningful form to a very spontaneous music.

Larry Ochs – saxophones
Francois Houle – Bb clarinet
Madalyn Merkey and Tim Perkis - electronics

Center for New Music

March 4, 5, 6

Larry Ochs’ Fictive Five on the Road

Larry Ochs - Compositions, tenor and sopranino saxophones
Harris Eisenstadt - drums 
Ken Filiano and Pascal Niggenkemper - basses
Nate Wooley - trumpet 

March 4, 7:30 PM
Timucua Arts Foundation

March 5, 8:00 PM
Barking Legs Theatre

March 6, 8:00 PM
Hendershots

Steve Adams - woodwinds, electronics
Ken Filiano - bass, electronics

Now out on bandcamp:
Six new pieces for woodwinds, bass and electronics, available free! at steveadams.bandcamp.com

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You can stay in touch with all Rova:Arts activities through our website, subscribing to Rova's Radar, and our FaceBook and MySpace pages. See links at the bottom of the page. Also, check out Rova on YouTube! Subscribe to our channel and be notified when there are new Rova videos for you to watch. Go to our Youtube page and click the subscribe button.

About Rova:Arts

Rova:Arts, formed in 1986 to support the activities of Rova, has been instrumental in producing local projects and advancing an ongoing cultural exchange between local Bay Area artists and the international scene through its Rovaté concert series. These events, made possible by funding to Rova:Arts, have engaged Bay Area musicians and composers—as well as musicians from around the world. Rova:Arts projects are often reproduced in other parts of the world, thereby bringing the work to a broader audience. Also, many Rova:Arts events have been recorded, resulting in releases which have been enthusiastically celebrated.

Click here to find out more and to Join Rova:Arts. If you are interested in getting involved in a more hands-on-way, feel free to contact us. Thanks for being part of the art.

Bandcamp! Bandcamp!

We’re now offering both new and impossible to find Rova recordings and other points of interest on our Bandcamp page. Be sure to check out recordings there, including, Saxophone Special, No Favorites, as well as, for example, the long out-of-print 1990 recording Long on Logic that we are making available as a CD download for the first time.

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:: SEE WHAT’S ON ROVA’S RADAR NEXT IN APRIL 2020 ::

Be sure to visit us online:

Rova.org
Bandcamp
RovaMySpace
RovaFacebook
CDBaby