MUSIC REVIEW : ROVA Saxophone Quartet in UCI Symposium

The final concert of the UC Irvine’s all-day Electronic Music Symposium was a performance of Alvin Curran’s “Electronic Rags II” on Saturday night. This not inconsiderable feat was ably accomplished by the avant-garde saxophone quartet ROVA, with frequent associate Scot Gresham-Lancaster joining the composer at the computer controls.

The work consists of 30 three-minute miniatures that combine a small measure of improvisation with written music and electronically generated sound. Performers may opt for the entire set, or may create abbreviated versions. On this occasion, held at the Nelson Research Center in a remote corner of the Irvine campus, the duration was 75 minutes.

Those minutes did not pass quickly. Yet lack of variety was not to blame. The quartet--John Raskin, Larry Ochs, Steve Adams, and Bruce Ackley--indulged in staccato squawks. They bravely bent pitches. They united for frantic screaming sessions. They separated for mournful, jazz-influenced solos.

Behind ROVA’s acrobatics, the electronics gave intimate response prompted by a computer program that interfaced with the saxophone score.

Electronics offer infinite possibilities, most of which seemed to have come to fruition Saturday night. The electronic background was chimes. It was a steaming boiler to the quartet’s open railroad-imitating intervals. It was the whole railroad. There were male and female voices that spoke or sang unintelligibly. There were eerie Spielberg-type sound effects and an array of peculiarly electronic sounds all aptly related to the amplified acoustic instruments.

Still, with all this activity, a sizable portion of the audience of 85 abandoned their posts, though one would assume they did not wander mistakenly or uninitiated into an out-of-the-way electronic music symposium.

The remaining stalwarts squirmed, scratched and looked generally glassy-eyed (when they weren’t looking surreptitiously at their watches). The problem was that this humming hive of activity produced a sticky sameness.

Not surprisingly, the most effective moments of the work were the instants of silence juxtaposed against a sea of sound. Indeed, silence is an important component in all music, but how often does one yearn for the relief that only absolute quiet can provide?

And what was the fitting conclusion of Curran’s tour de force? It stopped. After 75 minutes, the members of ROVA--whose appearance had been sponsored by the Newport Harbor Art Museum as the beginning of its 1989-90 concert season--simply stopped, graciously shook the composer’s hand and thanked their weary audience.