Flotation Device 2024-02-11 - Henry Threadgill at 80

Flotation Device celebrates Henry Threadgill’s 80th birthday with a career retrospective for the acclaimed reed player, composer, Vietnam veteran and bandleader that emphasizes his fondness for unusual instrumentation and collective improvisation. We sample combos with four basses, two tubas, and other oddball configurations, and espy their influence in Mahakala Music's new Miserere album, which also draws inspiration from an 11th century Gregorian hymn associated with the invention of do re mi. Meanwhile, Veli Kujala and James Moore compose for microtonal accordion and harp, Derek Bailey jams with Bill Evans’ drummer Paul Motian, and Evans himself is heard in a peculiar studio recording that mixes modal jazz, minimalism and 70s-style TV music—brought to us by our 50 years ago in the avant-garde feature, which also honors a boisterous landmark composition by Alfred Schnittke and a more modest work by Luciano Berio, both premiered on the same weekend in February 1974.