Flotation Device salutes Pierre Boulez for his 100th birthday, with a focus on his career as a composer, beginning with his apprenticeship under Messiaen, and continuing through the breakthrough works of the 50s, the mellower later one, and his embrace of high-end computer music after the founding of IRCAM. Through it all we acknowledge Boulez’s stature as one of the truly great composers in Webern’s direct lineage, but also as a latter-day representative of the longstanding French infatuation with sensuous color and organic form. We also reflect on his conducting career, and how the orchestral sound he cultivated—with its emphasis on precision and crystalline textures—has become a reference point for modern digital multitrack recordings of classical music. We're helped by Ensemble intercontemporain and Seattle Symphony, while cameos by Frank Zappa, Philip Glass and Boulez himself offer perspective on this last superstar of the postwar avant-garde.
