NOTES
by Richard Minsky


Above: the Limited Edition


Installation of Notes at the Center for Book Arts, New York, October 10 — December 20, 2014

A book with some new compositions created for 23 notes,
several earlier musical works and archive materials.

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Click to See Sample pages from Notes (3 MB PDF)

click to see videos of Minsky reading from NOTES at the Center for Book Arts, Nov. 14 2014

Love the NOTES project. Also, the rendition of I Want to be Riveted video on your website is so good. It's a lot of noise but it is amazing to watch and hear and very inspiring. You look like a wild animal—in the best possible sense. Wild in voice, in group, in tonethe whole thing is amazing. I would have loved to have been there.
Chris Lura
Editor, Paul Revere's Horse

In the early 1970s I bound a small leather blank book of handmade paper.Titled Musical Theory, for a couple of decades it was used for jotting down riffs, lyrics, and thoughts. In 2012 this book was acquired by the Special Collections department of Yale Uniiversity's Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library. It was included in their exhibition, Jazz and the Book Arts, February 24 — June 16, 2014.

The edition of Notes includes reproductions of pages from the Musical Theory  manuscript, original archived material from the 1970s and 1980s, sheet music, photos of the construction of the musical chair, and a CD.

Available are 15 copies bound in cloth, 5 copies in leather, and a unique copy bound to a musical chair.


The binding opens flat throughout the book.



Above: a page from the section "Phoneme Riffs."

NOTES includes the score for Adventures in Ku-Ta-Ba Wa-Do (1972)
 

Each copy includes one original color field linoleum block print from the series made for the original edition of Adventures in Ku-Ta-Ba Wa-Do in 1972. For the recording session at Mercury Studios, the 12 musicians had a set of prints on their music stands with the score. Below is an example of one print; the one in each copy of NOTES will be be different.

A CD of the 1972 recording is included with NOTES.

 
Every copy of the book includes an original  limited edition record jacket I printed letterpress in 1981 for the never released recording of I Wanna Be Riveted, performed by Old Man Rivet and the Rivetheads at the Allan Stone Gallery, May 5, 1981. The song title and band name came from Musical Theory. Photo of Minsky as Old Man Rivet by Peter Seidler, jacket design by Pat Gorman. The jacket is hung in a double-sided window. A sleeve in the jacket holds a CD with a recording of the event, including some conversations, sound check, and the performance.  The tape was lost from 1981 to 2020. Read more about the CD and the jacket.

Riveted CD

Notes also includes several sheet music transcriptions of MIDI compositions from the 1990s.

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The Musical Chair

One copy of Notes is chained to a bench with 23 vintage organ pipes. The chair and keyboard console are made from the wood of one cherry tree that went down in a lighning storm. Photos of the construction of this work are here.

This is my second reading chair. See Freedom of Choice : Three Poems of Love and Death by Lucie Brock-Broido.

Installation of Notes at the Center for Book Arts, New York, October 10 — December 20, 2014

Questions? click to CONTACT Richard Minsky.

Limited Edition: with color reproductions of pages from the unique original manuscript book and additional new material. It will be printed in archival digital offset, in a hardbound cloth binding by Richard Minsky. Limited to fifteen signed copies numbered 1-15, each includes an original  limited edition record jacket printed letterpress in 1988 for the never released recording of I Wanna Be Riveted, and other inclusions. Size: 12" x 9"

Notes Limited Edition

$595.00

Deluxe Edition: limited to five signed copies numbered I-V in a leather binding.

Notes Deluxe Edition
$1,500.00

Musical Chair: unique binding on a 13' x 9.5" copy of Notes, printed in archival high-resolution inkjet, chained to a cherry wood bench incorporating organ pipes, with a keyboard console made of wood from the same tree. See photos above.

Price: $120,000.00.

If you are interested in acquiring the chair, please use the Contact form, phone, or the Order Form below. 

If you wish to pay by check, please use the order form below or phone.

Questions? click to CONTACT Richard Minsky.

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