In the early 70s, Venice Beach, California was a hotspot for artistic and musical collaboration. These conditions produced many women's bands and a unique fusion of sounds. The members of the quartet that would become High Risk, Cynth Mason, Bobi Jackson, Sandi Ajida, and Virginia Rubino, developed their musical expertise in this environment. High Risk has largely fallen into obscurity, but after the 2019 re-release of the High Risk disc, the quartet received some recognition for their artistic accomplishments.

Who were those wild women on the cover of one of the rarest lesbian 45 rpm recordings? Who produced it and how was it received by audiences? 
In 1975, Donna Deitch, who would go on to direct the 1986 classic lesbian film Desert Hearts, produced her first film, Woman to Woman (see review). Through images, interviews, animation, and music, Woman to Woman explored the evolution of women's work in the United States throughout the 20th century. As a "feminist educational film," the film aimed to spark discussion and rouse questions about the state and future of women in America. Flute and sax player, Cynth, who was working on the film with Deitch, introduced High Risk to the production team. The 48-minute film included two songs by High Risk; the soundtrack was released as a single with the above image as the cover.

Side B contains the track "Degradation" whose lyrics reflect the themes of Woman to Woman and are a sharp criticism of the patriarchy.
These two songs and the movie soundtrack are the only known release by this quartet: Virginia Rubino, Sandi Ajida, Cyndy Mason and Bobi Jackson. While these are the names that appear on the album insert and are named by Cyndy in an interview with Jazzaggression, Woman to Woman credits Virginia Rubino, Sandi Agida, Cindy Fitzpatrick, and Barbara Jackson.

The EP only credits the cover art as "Painting by Max," but a google image search found that the artist was Max Dashu. She has a long history of preserving women's history, and has the website Suppressed Histories, which is an excellent repository of Max's research and work into early matriarchal culture and well worth a visit.

Soundohm says about the album, "The LP is a 1975 recording of the all-female Spiritual jazz Californian outfit High Risk. A unique musical experience that is oozing the spiritual freedom of the early seventies in a creative mixture of jazz, folk and poetry – all fuelled with political lyrics."

The album is further described as "A really unique album by an all-female jazz group from the LA scene of the 70s – a group who were part of the feminist collective of artists distributed by Olivia Records, but who are maybe even more righteous than the rest! The group mix together jazz and poetry – the latter of which is both sung and spoken, and often has these wonderful ways of tying together personal desires and inclinations with larger political issues – all while the rest of the combo is laying down a spiritual current of piano, percussion, bass, and strong solos on tenor and flute from Cyndy "Cynth" Mason Fitzpatrick. The centerpiece of the record is the extended suite “The Common Woman” – based around the poetry of Judy Grahn – and that’s balanced out by a fair bit more instrumental work at other times on the set."

Thanks to J. D. Doyle for the content of this featurette and for the great work he does at Queer Music Heritage! Also check out QMH's Women’s Music Index. 

Jazzaggression interviewed Cynth about the origins of High Risk and the Jazz scene, which informed the content of this featurette.  

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