The kindly editors of Ashgate Press are scurrying to cross all the final t’s and dot the i’s of The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music, with the expeditious assistance of the book’s three editors, Keith Potter, Pwyll Ap Sion, and myself. The goal is to have it published and available by October, to sell at a special price to the attendees of the Fourth International Conference on Minimalist Music in Long Beach. (The regular price, I understand, will be around $150; it’s one of Ashgate’s hefty, library-aimed tomes, with articles by twenty authors.) We had a devil of a time coming up with cover art because we didn’t want to privilege any of the Super Four – Young, Riley, Reich, Glass – over the other three, but Pwyll came up with some wonderful graphic charts of early minimalist pieces by Jon Gibson, who had worked with all four of them, and they’re attractive and set the perfect tone. And now I have just learned that, thanks to another of Pwyll’s inspirations, the volume will be dedicated to William Duckworth, in memoriam.
Every once in awhile the universe falls into alignment, and a bit of perfect justice is done on earth.