Flotation Device 2023-04-16 - Feldman, Sun Ra, whims

Historical voices inform contemporary ones in this podcast. We pay our respects to Karl Berger, who bridged Ornette Coleman’s milieu with today’s Downtown improv scene. We celebrate synthesizer pioneer Morton Subotnick for his 90th birthday, and we connect Sun Ra’s contemporaneous synth experiments with the extemporaneous electroacoustic world of London’s Scatter quartet. The Grdina/Maneri/Lillinger trio gives some consideration to the oud and viola as worthy instruments for avant-improvisation. 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.

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. New works by Elsa Bergman, Stefano Gervasoni and Philippe Manoury round out the playlist.