GIO & George Lewis Project

 

George Lewis has written a new piece for GIO. The collaboration is due to extend into 2008 with further developments and performances.

George Lewis, improviser-trombonist, composer and computer/installation artist, is the Edwin H. Case Professor of Music at Columbia University. The recipient of a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship in 2002, a Cal Arts/Alpert Award in the Arts in 1999, and numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. He has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work as composer, improviser, performer and interpreter is documented on more than 120 recordings including collaborations with everyone from the Count Basie and Gil Evans orchestras to John Zorn and Irene Schweizer, and his published articles on music, experimental video, visual art, and cultural studies have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes.
A recipient of several awards from the National Endowment for the Arts in both music and inter-arts categories, Lewis has presented his interdisciplinary compositions across Eastern and Western Europe, North America and Japan. His computer compositions have been premiered at the Banff Centre (Canada), IRCAM (Paris) and the Studio voor Elektro-Instrumentale Muziek (Amsterdam). Lewis' intermedia installations have been shown at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago and Musee de la Villette in Paris, and his "interactive music videos", combining the mediums of theatre, video and computer music, have been presented at the Arte Elettronica Festival in Camerino (Italy) and The Kitchen (New York).
He has taught at Mills College, Simon Fraser University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of California, and Columbia University.
As a performer, he has mastered the lyrical, tonal and percussive qualities of the trombone. His compositions bridge traditions of acoustic and electric, American and European, rhythmic and free form. He explores a wide variety of expressive modes, including text-sound collaborations with poets. Lewis also has been a pioneer in the application of computers to algorithmic improvisation. His performances, criticism and scholarly analyses reveal profound insights into the unique expressive potential of improvisation and its critical role in the history and future of musical expression.