Thanks Eli, and thanks Emily, for jumping in in Unwritten Music! (click on the more break below for the whole post)

The other day at Soundpainting Emily mentioned that San Fransisco’s ROVA Saxophone Quartet uses a system of cues to structure their improvisations. While I haven’t found any mention of the specific gestures they use (I haven’t seen them live), on their website Larry Ochs gives a substantial in-depth description of their improvisation piece Radar, here:

http://rova.org/foodforthought/radar.html

ROVA is turning 30 this year, and has been pursuing structured improvisation almost their whole career…

Similar to and inspired by John Zorn’s improvisational game pieces such as Cobra, ROVA’s pieces have taken many forms over the years.  Their most recent incarnation is a piece called Radar, an elaborate system based largely on rule-based improvisational “games”, but with the freedom to shape the music in the moment with “events” and “variables”.

“Games” (which Ochs calls “process cues”) are systems of rules for improvising, often producing a specific musical effect (check out “pygmy” or “cloud crystals”).  As the guys in ROVA are seasoned improv vets, they deal more with “who plays when” rather than “who plays what”.

The concept here that most resembles Soundpainting–since it deals directly with basic musical gestures–is that of (musical) “Events” (and possibly “variables”, though they aren’t really discusses in the article).  Example multiplayer events:

-field
-machine sound
-wave
-drone
-microdrone

A list of “Interruptor” events reveals some more similarities:

-sound block
-solo over group
-memory cue

The article continues with a glossary and explanation of common cues used in Radar over the past 5 years; rest assured that “A fuller glossary of cued events employed by Rova over the past 20 years is being compiled.”

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Here’s a great hour-and-a-half discussion with ROVA on their interests as improvisor-composers, notably how they used compositional elements to loosen the habits so often found in free improvisation.  They also mention that going not-for-profit made it easier to commission composers (Alvin Curran, Fred Frith, Anthony Braxton, John Adams, Terry Riley…) with similar concerns.  Most of the clip is about working with graphical scores and film:

http://www.archive.org/details/IMP_2005_06_05

Here’s another link with video (RealMedia) and some neat promo notes (.pdf) for an educational workshop including some basic improvisation games and interesting questions about improvising:

http://www.kqed.org/arts/places/spark/profile.jsp?id=4823

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