Flotation Device celebrates Charles Amirkhanian’s 80th birthday with a mini-medley of lexical and often humorous compositions from the Bay Area's leading contemporary music curator and journalist. Also linked to that region is György Ligeti's San Francisco Polyphony, the last of his great sonorist orchestral works. We celebrate its 50th anniversary, noting its echoes in a new Wenchen Qin concerto for Western orchestra and Chinese solo instruments.
Unveiled in the same year as the Ligeti was a classic LP by David Toop that we use as a springboard to explore several new releases by that eccentric English musician and writer. And we sample cross-cultural music by PAN Project, a microtonal guitar duet by Pascale Citron, chamber works by Eric Nathan, Rune Glerup and Michał Pawełek, and improvised tracks by Ben Goldberg, Sam Newsome, Jean-Michel Pilc, Craig Taborn, Brandon Seabrook, the Rob Mazurek Quartet and the Stemeseder Lillinger duo. Creative and improvised music with Michael Schell.
