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.