Flotation Device celebrates Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated! for its 50th anniversary with a tag-team traversal featuring Igor levit, Marc-André Hamelin, Yuji Takahashi, Omri Shimron, Ursula Oppens and Rzewski himself as soloists. We also preview Seattle Symphony’s upcoming performances of Qigang Chen’s Iris Unveiled for two sopranos, a Beijing Opera singer, three Chinese instruments and a large Western orchestra in service to texts from the Beijing Opera tradition. Its Old Meets New sensibilities are echoed in more recent works by Juri Seo (inspired by Hildegard von Bingen and French Baroque music), James Weeks (harkening back to Renaissance madrigals) and Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (harkening back to Boethius). Creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world with host Michael Schell, from 91.3 KBCS Bellevue/Seattle/Tacoma.
