[1] Johnson’s early talent for mathematics earned him a full scholarship to the Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, where he completed high school.
The creation of November was inspired by Johnson's UCLA college friend La Monte Young's Trio for Strings, written in 1958.
November is a pensive piano piece that runs for nearly six hours and predates all other known minimalist works in its use of additive process and diatonic tonality.
[5][6] In 2017 the Dutch pianist and composer Jeroen van Veen released November as part of his eight-disc Minimal Piano Collection, Vols.
Johnson was born in Los Angeles and died aged 80 on December 20, 2018, in Morgan Hill, California, from complications of dementia.