User:Luciferfan/sandbox

Dennis Johnson (Composer)
Dennis Johnson (born 1938) is credited as having composed the first truly 'Minimal' composition ‘November’, which was written for solo piano in 1959 (later revised). ‘November’ is famous for being the inspiration for Johnson’s UCLA college friend La Monte Young’s 1964 composition ‘The Well-Tuned Piano’.

The work has been painstakingly reconstructed from a 1962 (112min) cassette recording, and six pages of the original score, by the composer and musicologist Kyle Gann, who first performed a four and a half hour version in 2009 with Sarah Cahill. Gann has produced a new performance score based on the original material that R. Andrew Lee has recorded in a five hour version released in 2013 by Irritable Hedgehog Music, receiving good reviews and a renewed interest in this work of seminal minimalism.

Dennis Johnson gave up music around 1962 and moved into mathematics (working for a time at Caltech, the private research university in Pasadena) leaving this one fascinating and influential work that features many of the elements that would later become the basic staples of late 60s and early 1970s ‘Minimalism’.

Denys Irving (Musician, Filmmaker)
Denys George Irving (1944-1976), was born on 4 January 1944 in Colwyn Bay, North Wales.

He grew up in South London and was educated at Dulwich College (1954–1961), where he was awarded the Fawkes Memorial Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford (1962), where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. After graduating in 1966 he went on to study at the London School of Economics, and was a graduate student in the Philosophy Ph.D. program at Columbia University, New York.

Whilst at Columbia in 1968, Denys was actively involved in student politics, notably during the student demonstrations in May, when he was prominent among a large number of students who occupied Fairweather Hall. It was at Columbia that Denys became interested in artificial intelligence and started working with computers. In December 1968 he wrote to his parents: “I have been working with computers this term and I have made pretty good progress so far and my plan is to try to get accepted by the Royal College of Art (film department) to do research into computer generated research and music.” He acknowledged that “the chances (of being accepted) are pretty slim.” (This assessment proved correct and Denys’s application to the Film School was rejected. Perhaps what he was trying to do was a bit too avant-guard for the film establishment of the time).

Using Columbia University’s mainframe computer he developed programs to produce short computer generated silent films. In a letter dated 9th May 1969 he referred to “working on my various films in the face of incredible and demented opposition. I may manage to finish one or more before I leave!” In New York Denys pioneered projection systems for ‘psychedelic’ effects, initially using liquid inks on glass slides, and later combining these with a variety of photographic images. He mounted a powerful projector in his tiny apartment in the East Village and projected images onto the building opposite, often attracting substantial crowds.

On his return to London in 1969, Denys continued to be interested in making films and in record production. An early exponent of what Howard Marks (who he’d met at Oxford) later described as ‘proto punk’, he set up a company with Howard called Lucifer Recordings Ltd. Lucifer (1970s rock band) produced various singles, including the infamous “Fuck You” and two LPs, “Big Gun” and “Exit” in which he played all the instruments and also provided the vocals. These were available by mail order through the underground press, including Oz magazine and International Times. The “Exit” LP was the soundtrack to the recently rediscovered ‘motor-cycle shock film’ “Exit” which Denys wrote, directed and starred in. It was produced by Lucifer Films Ltd. a company he formed with Naomi Zack, who he’d met at Columbia University. Around this time he also worked as a roadie for The Pink Floyd.

In a letter to his parents dated 6th May 1970 he refers to a recent TV programme Disco 2 and asks “Did you see my nude body on Disco 2? They apparently couldn’t use my computer film, (presumably “69”,) but they did use the footage of another film I made in America.” Around 1975 Denys became interested in synthesizers and, working with his friend Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine, constructed a prototype synthesizer. In America he had taken up hang gliding and he continued to pursue this interest in England. In August 1976 his hang glider crash landed at Mill Hill, Sussex, and he was fatally injured. He left a wife, Merdelle Jordine, (an actress who was one of the first black women to appear in a British soap opera, Crossroads playing Trina MacDonald 41 episodes, 1978-1982), who he’d married in 1975, and a son Arthur.

Denys was an attractive and charismatic character who enjoyed operating on the frontier of new developments and challenging the established order of things. It is something of an irony that Denys died in the year that micro-computers became available. The personal Computer medium would have provided the ideal tool and vehicle for his exciting and creative energies. He was a pioneer in early computer generated animation and his work was recently shown at the Tate Gallery, London). Two of his computer generated films "69" & "Now" are held in the LUX collection.

as arranger and orchestrator
Family, Yes,

Renaissance,

John and Beverley Martyn, to name just a few.

Tony Cox

Refrence test,


 * credits on Allmusic.com Retrieved 5 Novembery 2016.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/441499-The-Young-Idea

http://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/any-mother-doesnt-grumble/

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/tony-cox-mn0001219459/credits

The Young Idea LP in 1967,


 * The Young Idea LP, at Discogs.com Retrieved 5 November 2016.
 * The Young Idea, on officialcharts.com Retrieved 5 November 2016.
 * Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, by Rob Young. ISBN 0-571-23753-3
 * The Young Idea CD liner notes by Stefan Granados
 * The Great British Recording Studios, by Howard Massey. ISBN 1-4584-2197-X
 * Mick Softley CD Retrieved 5 November 2016.
 * credits on Allmusic.com Retrieved 5 November 2016.


 * Review by Brian R. Banks