Minimalism meets anarchy as Flotation Device honors groundbreaking works by two American mavericks, both premiered in November 1973. In John Cage’s Etcetera, performers must choose between austere independence and comfortable conformism, a metaphor for the composer's Thoreau-inspired philosophical anarchism. In Meredith Monk’s Education of the Girlchild, the composer portrays an old woman reliving her life in reverse order. It's a landmark of minimalist, female-centric opera. We also check in with Cecil Taylor's decidedly anti-minimalist quartet as it performs contemporaneously at New York's Town Hall, delivering an acoustic barrage that’s even more relentless than Miles Davis’s heavily-amplified electric band, heard that same week in Belgrade.
As for newer music, there's Dave Liebman doing free improv, Kate Gentile's new box, Lao Dan playing dizi, Mamer playing sherter, plus Tyondai Braxton, Allochtone, John Luther Adams and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s.
