GEORGE LEWIS – Composer and Trombonist, Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University

George Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002, an Alpert Award in the Arts in 1999, and 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. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work as composer, improvisor, performer and interpreter explores electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated and improvisative forms, and is documented on more than 140 recordings. His oral history is archived in Yale University’s collection of “Major Figures in American Music,” and his compositions and installations have been presented by the American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Either/Or, Dinosaur Annex, Wet Ink, the Turning Point Ensemble, Ensemble Erik Satie, Works and Process, the S.E.M. Ensemble, the NOW Orchestra, Deutschlandradio Kultur Berlin, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, and others, with commissions from the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, OPUS (Paris), IRCAM, Musee des Sciences et des Industries La Villette, Harvestworks, Studio Museum in Harlem, the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others. His widely acclaimed book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) is a recipient of the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society’s Music in American Culture Award. Most recently, Lewis was selected by United States Artists as a 2011 USA Walker Fellow.

George Lewis

Photo image credit: Eileen Barroso

SHORT BIO