Manafonistas

To read them, you have to click on the photo! The record leads back to 1982. i always loved the cover of Steve Tibbetts‘ NORTHERN SONG, the rainy street, the blackness, the damaged paper. It was the only Tibbetts record Manfred Eicher has ever produced, in Oslo, during a long weekend. Doing something in real time, and using no overdubs, was a unique experience for the duo of Steve (with acoustic guitar, a kalimba, some tapes only), and Marc Anderson’s percussion instruments. NORTHERN SONG is a music full of holes, silences, pulses, and breath. Though you can call it meditative, it didn’t interfere with the terrible sweetness of that era’s „new age“ garbage. I never got bored by the breathtakingly concentrated execution of a silent state of mind. Hearing this, you have no Maharishi-disciple in mind, no hippies, who desparately want to share their spiritual messages. Nevertheless, it’s pure and simple and profound, on the ambient side of life. P.S.: There’s a subtle, nearly ethereal connection between NORTHERN SONG, MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS, and Dennis Johnson’s NOVEMBER.

La Monte Young credited Dennis Johnson’s 1959 piece November with inspiring The Well Tuned Piano, but no transcription of it existed until now. The only recording was a hiss-filled 100 minute long cassette (of a piece Young said could „theoretically“ be six hours long). Kyle Gann has now constructed a score from the original cassette recording, which requires the performer (in this case pianist R Andrew Lee) to improvise against several pages of Gann’s short musical score.

November was the magnum opus of a heavily abbreviated career, but one that left a largely uncredited mark on the development of minimalist composition. Nobody knows Johnson’s whereabouts, he took himself out of radio contact years ago, and it’s not known if a transcription of the piece ever existed. He also wrote a piece titled The Second Machine, but soon after abandoned music and went into computer science.

R Andrew Lee’s performance of November is being released by Penultimate Press and Irritable Hedgehog as a 4CD box set. In my early morning show, „November“ will be presented one hour long – in September.