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DJ Appreciation Post – Michael Schell host of Flotation Device

January 24, 2025 - 10:00 pm

A graphic for a KBCS DJ appreciation post in brown, green, and white. There is an image of a white man wearing glasses with water behind him inside of an oval, the image is in black and white, and the man is making a neutral face. Michael Schell

Join us every Sunday at 10pm for Flotation Device on 91.3 KBCS hosted by Michael Schell. Thank you, Michael for bringing global music to local radio at KBCS and expanding the taste of our listeners in the Seattle region.

One of the most unusual shows on KBCS is Flotation Device, which has showcased creative and improvised music from the Northwest and around the world for over 20 years. Its host since 2021 is Michael Schell, who is a composer by trade, but nowadays focuses mainly on radio and music journalism where he feels he can have the most impact.

Discovering Avant-Garde Music

“My interest in avant-garde music was sparked as a toddler when my parents gave me one of those 1960s-era Masterworks of Classical Music box sets filled with Bach, Mozart and Beethoven—and one token 20th century piece: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which terrified me with its loud dissonant chords, but also impressed me with its viscerality, its insistence on bypassing the conventions and customs of polite society to communicate directly and authentically.”

Education and Origin of Flotation Device

“I went on to study music in college, play in orchestras, and prowl around in the legendary Downtown New York experimental music and intermedia scene of the 80s and 90s, before following my wife to Seattle after a brief but formative stint in South Asia. Along the way I became acquainted with the vast tradition of Western art music as it evolved in the modern era to encompass composed, improvised and fixed-media music, and expanded from Europe to the Americas and thence all over the world. Flotation Device is the ideal vehicle to showcase the power and diversity of this music in its contemporary global praxis because of our holistic approach. At KBCS we can program Philip Glass alongside John Cage, Meredith Monk and Sun Ra with no loss of continuity, and that sets us apart from garden-variety classical and jazz stations that are too afraid of offending their audiences to play challenging new music or to make connections across established genres.”

“We seek out the strongest, most exploratory music we can find—so although you probably won’t like everything we play on Flotation Device, you will hear plenty of exciting and memorable music that you won’t encounter anywhere else.”

Noteworthy Episodes

Among Flotation Device’s most popular recent episodes are its annual Mother’s Day extravaganzas featuring Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and Michael’s interviews with musicians as wide-ranging as free jazz pioneer Wadada Leo Smith, keyboardist and Royal Room founder Wayne Horvitz, and Seattle Symphony Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot. Flotation Device has become one of the most admired radio shows of its kind in the country, and Michael is delighted to host it exclusively for KBCS.

A Note from KBCS

Thank you, Michael for spinning on KBCS and gracing us with fantastic music for our public radio station!

A graphic for a KBCS DJ appreciation post in brown, green, and white. There is an image of a white man wearing glasses with water behind him inside of an oval, the image is in black and white, and the man is making a neutral face.

Michael Schell