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ARTIST
TITLE
November
FORMAT
4CD BOX
LABEL
CATALOG #
PP 006CD
PP 006CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
4/28/2015
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2013 release. First recording of Dennis Johnson's five-hour minimalist masterpiece, November. Until recently, one of the most substantial and significant pieces of the minimalist repertoire was virtually unknown. Written in 1959 by Dennis Johnson, November was purportedly six hours long as originally conceived. La Monte Young, who knew Johnson while at UCLA in the late '50s, credited the piece for inspiring The Well-Tuned Piano. November anticipated many trends in minimalist music in addition to its prodigious duration: diatonic tonality, additive processes, and repetition of small motives. It is beautiful, slow-paced, and introspective, and was nearly lost entirely. Irritable Hedgehog and Penultimate Press present the first ever release of this historically significant and thoroughly engaging work. Noted critic Kyle Gann rescued November from obscurity, reconstructing the piece from the only existing materials: a hiss-ridden, 112-minute cassette recording played by Dennis Johnson himself (which Gann received from La Monte Young) and a rough score he received from Johnson. The score, such as it is, consists of several pages of short musical ideas, meant to be improvised upon as desired by the performer. Flexible instructions are also given for the order of the material to be performed. Pianist R. Andrew Lee has established himself in recent years as one of the foremost interpreters of the minimalist piano repertoire and has boldly embraced the challenge of this monumental work. Utilizing Gann's reconstructed score, he has recorded a sublime interpretation that finally documents one of the most important lost works in the 20th century canon. At once highly listenable, melancholic, warm, and unique, Dennis Johnson's November is a work of immense historical significance that will appeal to those with a taste for 20th century repertoire, minimalism, exploratory piano works, and substantial and haunting works of art. November comes in a deluxe box with four CDs in individual slipcases and a 20-page booklet featuring reproductions of the original score (and Johnson's later annotations) along with an essay on the work by Kyle Gann and anecdotal essays by Andy Lee, David McIntire, and Mark Harwood. Includes download code to allow for continual playback.
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