Rova Saxophone Quartet

Beat Kennel is the album the Rova Saxophone Quartet recorded at Barigozzi Studio in Milan on April 13, 14 and 15, 1987, released the same year by Black Saint. Francis Davis, in his liner notes of October 1987, counts it as the San Francisco quartet's tenth release since 1978. Larry Ochs told him the group had just completed a cycle of pieces that were, by its own standards, melodically and rhythmically direct, some of them built on chord changes. The four regarded Beat Kennel as the end of that cycle, which Davis traces back to Favorite Street, their 1983 Black Saint album of Steve Lacy compositions.

The line-up is Bruce Ackley on soprano saxophone, Ochs on tenor, Jon Raskin on baritone and Andrew Voigt on alto. Raskin takes the lead alto part on The Aggregate and Voigt switches to sopranino on What Was Lost Regained. Giancarlo Barigozzi engineered the date and Giovanni Bonandrini produced it. Four of the five pieces come from inside the group: Voigt's El Amor En Los Tiempos De La Finca, two by Raskin and the collectively written Sportspeak. In The Aggregate, Davis explains, the players may wander freely but only within the twelve tones set out in the theme. Sportspeak opens on a bop-like unison, then an Ochs tenor solo over Raskin's baritone grows into a simultaneous improvisation of the whole quartet. What Was Lost Regained is set going by two related heads, the second of which Davis hears as "the Monk-like quick step". The fifth piece is Composition 37 by Anthony Braxton, a work for four saxophones first heard on his album Fall 1974, which Davis uses to link Rova and the World Saxophone Quartet to a common starting point.

This is the Black Saint CD 120126-2, the album first issued in 1987 on LP and CD with catalogue number 120126.