KBCS

Memories and minimalism are the main themes on this episode of Flotation Device. We celebrate the 50th anniversaries of three minimalist landmarks—two by Steve Reich and one by Philip Glass—contemplating the influence of Ewe drumming on the former, and verbal misunderstandings on the latter. We also preview Wang Lu’s June 3 appearance with Seattle Modern Orchestra via an exclusive interview and a survey of her nostalgic and eclectic music. New works by Yikii, Thomas Adès, Enno Poppe and Todd Sickafoose, plus the return of John Zorn’s Masada after a 15-year hiatus, round out a unique and memorable show.

Flotation Device presents its 2023 Mother’s Day extravaganza, featuring Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Even if you’re not a big Zappa fan, we think you’ll be interested in this lineup: a combination of classic studio recordings from the 1960s plus highlights from four new releases from the Zappa vaults, all emphasizing the more improvisational, non-commercial side of Zappa and the Mothers.

Before there was grunge, before there was Hendrix, there was—the prepared piano. In this episode Flotation Device explores three new recordings featuring Seattle’s most famous musical invention, with Illegal Crowns and Ana Foutel demonstrating its use in contemporary free improv, while Agnese Toniutti represents Cage’s original conception via her fresh traversal of the Sonatas and Interludes. Cage’s influence is also evident in a classic Takemitsu/Roger Woodward collaboration that’s celebrating its 50th anniversary, and a new Hannah Kendall composition for solo violin prepared with dreadlock cuffs.

We also continue our exploration of Liza Lim’s ambitious new orchestral triptych. Plus, Brian Baumbusch melds Nancarrow and minimalism, Elsa Bergman plays in a quintet, Sun Ra plays (uncharacteristically) in a quartet, while Vassos Nicolaou writes for piano and Todd Sickafoose for podcast.

The full stylistic and geographical range of contemporary Western art music is on display in this edition of Flotation Device, with Bolivian chill, British minimalism and Indonesian acousmatica in the spotlight. Enjoy new orchestral works by Tyondai Braxton and Martin Stauning, a John Zorn miniature for acoustic guitars, plus fresh improv tracks from Illegal Crowns, Kaze (with guest Ikue Mori), Scott Fields (channeling Butch Morris) and Eva Novoa. A young Manchurian electronicist might remind you of Björk, while our 50 years ago in the avant-garde feature reminds us of the 1973 American zeitgeist that spawned hip-hop, speech synthesis, lexical music, talking percussionists, and a pair of works by Lou Harrison and Éliane Radigue that debuted in California on successive days. Also originating in 1973 was KBCS, whose Spring Fund Drive is upon us. The pandemic-era economy has been tough for many of our listeners, which directly impacts our favorite independent Northwest radio station, which receives 80% of its funding from individual contributors. If you have the means, we'd sure be grateful if you'd browse to https://KBCS.FM and click on the vaunted green Donate button. Any amount helps keep Flotation Device, and plenty of other unique music programs, on the air!

Clashing cultures take the spotlight on this week’s Flotation Device, with Balkan bagpipes driving Downtown fusion, Balinese gamelans accompanying string quartets, and Jakarta street synths backing saxophones. We continue our exploration of EunHo Chang’s new album wherein traditional Korean instruments and voices coexist with sounds more reminiscent of Boulez and Donna Summer. We take our first dive into major new orchestral works by Liza Lim (honoring three famous mythic females) and Tyondai Braxton (deploying real instruments to evoke the sound world of sampled instruments). Plus, we celebrate the 50th birthdays of a Rzewski minimalist landmark, a lost Sun Ra album, a torrential Nancarrow player piano study, and KBCS itself—who we genuinely hope you’ll support through our Spring Fund Drive!

Historical voices inform contemporary ones on this week’s Flotation Device. We pay our respects to the late Karl Berger who bridged Ornette Coleman’s milieu with today’s Downtown improv scene. We celebrate the 90th birthday of Morton Subotnick, whose synthesizer works helped define a language straddling the montage style of musique concrète and the gestural world of acoustic music—and whose traces can be observed in two new works from today’s Polish avant-garde. We also connect Sun Ra’s contemporaneous synth experiments with the extemporaneous electroacoustic world of London’s Scatter quartet. And the Grdina/Maneri/Lillinger trio gives some consideration to the oud and viola as worthy instruments for avant-improvisation.

PatKop as a composer? That too is on the docket, showing her affinity for Webern, something true for Feldman too, as revealed by a concerto that he refused to call a concerto and which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. We also connect Elsa Bergman and Stefano Gervasoni to Ligeti, and Philippe Manoury to Boulez. And we espy similarities between Scott Fields’ new text settings and Charles Dodge’s primordial experiments in musicalized computer speech, which are likewise turning 50, as is an obsessively plasmatic work by Rădulescu that anticipates much of today’s dark ambient and noise music.

Flotation Device celebrates the 80th birthday of the iconoclastic British composer Frank Denyer with a pair of recordings—one new, one rare—that reveal his penchant for uncompromising musical exploration, including an emphasis on unexpected instruments like shakuhachis and ocarinas.

We'll also pay our respects to the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, sample the nostalgic Bulgarian-inflected music of Alexandra Karastoyanova-Hermentin (for her 55th birthday), and survey new albums from Ingrid Laubrock, Alex Paxton, Dai Fujikura, Matt Mitchell and the Knuffke/McPhee Quartet. A fixed-media piece from South African musician Mntana WeXhwele that combines electronics with indigenous instruments rounds out the playlist.

Flotation Device bids farewell to Scott Johnson with a look back at his signature speech melody technique showcased in his breakout piece John Somebody and his magnum opus Mind Out of Matter.

We also preview Caroline Shaw’s upcoming Seattle appearance, wish Chen Yi a happy 70th birthday, and revisit two avant-garde gems—a late work by Maderna and an early one by Murail—celebrating their 50th anniversaries. Plus, new recordings by Ivan Fedele, Cheer-Accident, Barre Phillips with György Kurtág Jr., and David Lang demonstrating his trademark style of postminimalism based on near—not exact—repetition.

Flotation Device cracks open the new Matt Mitchell album featuring duets with two different drummers, as well as Bobby Mitchell’s premiere recording of a late Rzewski piano piece that echoes his iconic variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated! Julia Wolfe composes a string quartet…for percussionists, while Evgueni Galperine, Finnur Karlsson and Joby Talbot explore the augmented reality of trumpet, accordion and cello. Ryuichi Sakamoto contributes an unusually fragile and contemplative solo track while our favorite Kenyan electronicist, KMRU, returns with his own new album of fixed-media pieces. Kaze and guest Ikue Mori demonstrate the pandemic-era art of remote collaboration, a technique honed a decade earlier by the Sound-In collective. Matthias Kranebitter channels the Baroque composer Royer while Ig Henneman channels Galina “lady with the hammer” Ustvolskaya. Ivan Buffa reflects on Darmstadt-era pointillism while his fellow Slovakian Viera Janárčeková finds an unexpected connection between Shakespeare and Sciarrino. Finally, Ken Vandermark and Mette Henriette contribute new takes on the art of transnational improvisation.

Celebrate KBCS’s 50th birthday with a look back on the March 1973 zeitgeist that gave us student sit-ins at Bellevue Community College, as well as landmark albums by Stockhausen (with his own take on radio nostalgia), Frank Zappa (with an incipient R&B superstar lurking in the background) and Keith Jarrett (with one last nod to the avant-garde as he launched his solo career). We observe the influence of these three in new and forthcoming releases by Alex Paxton, Miriodor, Genoël von Lilienstern and Mirela Ivičević.

Lao Dan brings his bamboo flute to a gig with one of the OGs of Japanese free improv, Sabu Toyozumi, while the Jim Black Quartet explores John Zorn's contributions to the bagatelle form. Scott Robinson practices circular breathing beneath Matt Shipp’s strident chords in the new East Axis album, while Korean pansori and European lieder combine in EunHo Chang’s Sensational Bliss project, putting an exclamation point on this far-reaching lineup.

Cross-cultural music takes the spotlight in this edition of Flotation Device, driven by new albums from EunHo Chang, Lei Liang and Uwalmassa that draw on Korean, Chinese and Indonesian instruments and traditions. We sample new improv albums from Sana Nagano, the Bucher/Countryman duo and the Perch Hen Brock & Rain quartet that articulate their own cross-Atlantic perspectives, while Marcin Markowicz, Martin Smolka and Einar Torfi Einarsson offer a new slant on the bagatelle form.

We preview the forthcoming addition to Sarah Cahill’s The Future Is Female project with the premiere recording of a Pauline Oliveros composition that—uncharacteristically—uses conventional notation. And on the historical front we’ll say goodbye to Friedrich Cerha—and with him, the last connection to the great Darmstadt generation of European avant-gardists that included Berio, whose less-heralded abstract side is revealed in a somber masterpiece celebrating its 50th anniversary this week.

One last golden anniversary rounds out the playlist: an early Éliane Radigue electroacoustic epic that had just two people in the audience for its 1973 premiere. We’ll make up for that! Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell.

Composer and Seattle native Sheila Silver joins Flotation Device to talk about her opera A Thousand Splendid Suns, currently receiving its premiere production at Seattle Opera. Topics include her early influences, her decision to become a composer, her interest in North Indian classical music, and her approach to setting Khaled Hosseini’s daunting novel about two generations of beleaguered but resilient Afghan women. Accompanying the interview are excerpts from the opera’s first performance, plus selections from Silver’s epic Piano Concerto and her anti-war work Twilight's Last Gleaming.

Sci-fi opera takes center stage on this edition of Flotation Device, as we dive into Michel van der Aa’s Upload in its premiere recording, contrasting its theme of immortality gained through transferring one’s consciousness to the digital realm to Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers, as well as the original science fiction opera, Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s Aniara, set aboard a doomed spaceship.

We also sample the latest recorded works by Sciarrino, Adès, Christian Wolff, Younghi Pagh-Paan and Ryan Carter, and introduce ourselves to the sparse, delicate piano music of Bolivian composer Cergio Prudencio (via a new portrait album from Kairos). Pablo Ribot offers avant-electronica from Argentina, while Satoko Fujii and Otomo Yoshihide record together for the first time. John Zorn and Bill Laswell follow their own duet inclinations, as do Christian Bucher with Rick Countryman, and Gerald Cleaver with Brandon Lopez (the latter pair heard through the electronic post-filtering of hip-hop electronicist HPrizm). A newly-excavated Derek Bailey outing from 1982, plus João Lencastre’s international quartet and Austin Larkin’s solo violin, round out the proceedings. Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell.

Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music, Bryn Harrison’s post-trance minimalism, Steven Mackey’s death reflections, and a classic Cage prepared piano piece in an unfamiliar guise are all featured in new recordings. We preview Maria Schneider’s upcoming appearance in Seattle with one of her more outside big band works, and check out a different large ensemble fronted by two of the original outside players: Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye. A few standout European improvisers—Marc Ducret, Sergio Armaroli and Mette Henriette among them—explore smaller groupings of one to four musicians, while Seattle’s own Steve Layton and Idol Ko Si, plus the Indonesian duo of Wahono and Rizky Argadipradja, offer astringent electroacoustic works. An offbeat 90th birthday homage to Yoko Ono, and a backward-looking Peter Maxwell Davies gem celebrating its 50th anniversary round out the playlist. Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world.

In this program we listen to Ken Vandermark and Don Cherry inject analog synthesizers into free jazz via two newly-released live recordings (Cherry’s emerging from 45 years buried in a vault). We also mark the 50th anniversary of Cherry’s Relativity Suite album (starring Carla Bley) and Pierre Henry’s brainwave-driven contributions to an odd spectacle featuring Alwin Nikolais’ dancers performing alongside Nicolas Schöffer’s cybernetic sculptures. We celebrate John Corigliano’s 85th birthday with a little-known work that places him squarely in the Charles Ives lineage, while double bass evangelist Bertram Turetzky gets some 90th birthday love through one of his signature solo pieces. And we check out the latest recorded works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Christopher Fox, Anthony Cheung and Osvaldo Golijov (the latter channeling Schubert), plus new improv from Timuçin Şahin’s Flow State and the Timothy Daisy/Erez Dessel duo, as well as new fixed-media works by Perila and Langham Research Centre. Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell.

Flotation Device surveys new albums from Horse Lords, Nakama, Fred Frith, William Parker, and the two surviving OGs of the Art Ensemble of Chicago performing with a large cast that includes Moor Mother and Tomeka Reid. Complementing that is radical music for pipe organ from the late Alvin Lucier and the French composer Thomas Lacôte, plus radical electronica by musicians born in Kenya and Madagascar. We’ve also got some Sun Ra: a brand-new release featuring the only extent recordings of the heliocentric master performing on a Prophet VS synthesizer. And we’ll honor the late George Crumb’s landmark work for extended piano, Makrokosmos I, for its 50th anniversary.

Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell.

Composer Dai Fujikura joins us to talk about his upcoming premiere with Seattle Symphony. Dai’s career journey from Osaka to London, his musical influences (which range from Darmstadt avant-gardists to Sibelius and the soundtrack to Alien 3), and his new album of improvised music are among the topics we’ll discuss.

Plus, we’ve got free improv from Portugal, France and New York, subversive opera from Iran, radical organ music from Austria and Alvin Lucier, and a sampling from the latest batch of John Zorn’s Bagatelles. We also observe the centenary of beloved composer and teacher Ursula Mamlok, and the golden anniversaries of Elliott Carter’s formidable Third String Quartet and Ornette Coleman’s lone foray into North African cross-culturalism.

Flotation Device celebrates Seattle favorite John Luther Adams for his 70th birthday with a mini-retrospective of his pre-, mid- and post-Alaska years, plus a sneak peek at a forthcoming premiere recording in which he endeavors to turn his previous orchestral writing “up to 11”.

Also on the agenda: Annea Lockwood dances with insects, Gerald Barry gets minimal, and Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand (with our former host John Seman) goes punk. We’ve got new improv from Shelley Hirsch, Rick Countryman and friends, a historical item featuring Anthony Braxton on clarinet, and a harpsichord piece by Adams’ New Mexico neighbor Karola Obermüller. The premiere recording of a late Wuorinen piano work, and a heterostatic chamber piece by Charles Uzor that recalls Adams’ and James Tenney’s concept of ergodic form, round out the playlist. Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell.

Flotation Device celebrates the 80th birthdays of two very different British composers: Gavin Bryars, the noted minimalist, and Brian Ferneyhough, intellectual leader of the new complexity. We’ll also honor Gérard Pesson for his 65th birthday with an unusual composition that simultaneously channels Brahms and noise music.

Plus new improvised music by Tyshawn Sorey, Adam Rudolph, Ben LaMar Gay and Peter Brötzmann, and fixed-media music by The Residents and the Indonesian duo Senyawa. Radical new music that you’ll only hear on Flotation Device.

Speech melody is on our mind this week, propelled by its recent use in Heiner Goebbels's A House of Call and by Seattle Symphony's imminent performance of Steve Reich's Different Trains (1988), one of the foundational pieces for that technique along with Scott Johnson's John Somebody (recorded in 1986). We revisit both those works while also exploring new fixed-media music by Ni Zheng, composed music by Vito Palumbo, and improvised music by Barre Phillips and György Kurtág Jr.

We also check out modern uses of ancient instruments in the form of Gordon Grdina’s oud and PoiL Ueda’s biwa. Hans Abrahamsen’s masterpiece Schnee has a new recording, which we sample along with the Zappa estate's new release of a previously-unheard version of his indeterminate big band composition Approximate. Our 50 years ago in the avant-garde feature compares musical specimens by Miles Davis and Morton Feldman that materialized on the same day in January 1973 (no prizes for guessing which was louder). And we celebrate the 80th birthday of Barry Altschul with a combination of new and classic recordings featuring this eminent free drummer.

Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell.