George Lewis

George Lewis is an American composer, musicologist, computer-installation artist, and trombonist. He is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, and Area Chair in Composition, as well as Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Lewis’s other honors include the Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis’ work is presented by ensembles worldwide. He is widely regarded as a pioneer in the creation of computer programs that improvise in concert with human musicians. His book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society’s Music in American Culture Award. Lewis (with Benjamin Piekut) is the co-editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (2016). Lewis holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, and Birmingham City University, among others (https://music.columbia.edu/bios/george-e-lewis).