Rova Saxophone Quartet

Totally Spinning is a Rova Saxophone Quartet album that Black Saint released in 2006, ten years after its two oldest tracks were taped. The Bay Area group, formed in 1977, had already recorded for the Milan label, including its 1995 version of John Coltrane's Ascension. Here the four saxophonists play their own book: three pieces by Steve Adams, two by Jon Raskin, one by Fred Frith and two versions of Radar, a structured improvisation that comes out differently every time.

The line-up is Bruce Ackley on soprano, Adams on alto and sopranino, Larry Ochs on tenor and sopranino and Raskin on baritone, with Myles Boisen engineering. The sleeve suggests a single year, but Ochs told Beppe Colli of Clouds and Clocks (2006) that only Let's Go Totally Spinning and Stiction come from the April 14, 1996 session at Sharkbite Studio in Oakland, made at the time of the Victo album Resistance. Most of the rest was recorded in November 2000 at Mr. Toads in San Francisco, and the Frith piece was added during editing. "The 'delay' in release was first our doing," Ochs said. Raskin's opener sets a whistleable theme over a swinging riff and gives the baritone a long solo. Adams's Cuernavaca Starlight For Charles Mingus leans on Mingus's debt to Ellington: Ken Waxman, in Jazzword (2006), heard it turn almost into a concerto for Harry Carney's baritone, with Raskin in the role and the higher horns recalling an Ellington clarinet trio. Raskin's It's A Journey, Not A Destination, nearly sixteen minutes, moves from a stormy start through a solo by Ackley's soprano to baritone duets with alto and tenor. Frith's short Kick It sits in the middle and divides the CD in two. Waxman closed his review with "No leftover blast from the past, Totally Spinning is vital music that can be heard in any year."

This is the Black Saint CD 120206-2, first released in 2006, eight tracks recorded in 1996 and 2000.