George E. Lewis

In April 2022, the International Contemporary Ensemble announced the appointment of Lewis as its next artistic director, effective April 2022.

In 2008, Lewis published a book-length history of the AACM titled A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press). The book received the 2009 American Book Award. Also, in 2008, his work "Morning Blues for Yvan" was featured on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike.

Lewis is featured extensively in Unyazi of the Bushveld (2005), directed by Aryan Kaganof, a documentary about the first symposium of electronic music held in Africa. Lewis gave an invited keynote lecture and performance at NIME-06, the sixth international conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, which was held at IRCAM, Paris, in June 2006.

Since 2004, he has served as Edward H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University in New York City. He previously taught at the University of California, San Diego.

In 2002, Lewis received a MacArthur Fellowship. His many honors also include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Fellowship (2011), the Alpert Award in the Arts (1999), and the American Musicological Society's Music in American Culture Award in 2009. He became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2016, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. Lewis has received four honorary degrees: Doctor of Music from the University of Edinburgh in 2015, Doctor of Humane Letters from New College of Florida in 2017, Doctor of Music from Harvard University in 2018, and Doctor of Music from the University of Pennsylvania in 2022.

In 1992, Lewis collaborated with Canadian artist Stan Douglas on the video installation Hors-champs which was featured at documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. The installation features Lewis in an improvisation of Albert Ayler's "Spirits Rejoice" with musicians Douglas Ewart, Kent Carter and Oliver Johnson.

Between 1988 and 1990, Lewis collaborated with video artist Don Ritter to create performances of interactive music and interactive video controlled by Lewis's improvised trombone.

In the 1980s, Lewis succeeded Rhys Chatham as the music director of The Kitchen.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Lewis first encountered the AACM while taking a year off from Yale University at the age of 19. Members encouraged him to finish his degree, and he graduated from Yale in 1974 with a degree in philosophy. Shortly after, he released Solo Trombone Record to great acclaim. Lewis has long been active in creating and performing with interactive computer systems, most notably his software Voyager, which "listens" and reacts to live performers.

George Emanuel Lewis (born July 14, 1952) is an American composer, performer, and scholar of experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, when he joined the organization at the age of 19. He is renowned for his work as an improvising trombonist and considered a pioneer of computer music, which he began pursuing in the late 1970s; in the 1980s he created Voyager, an improvising software he has used in interactive performances. Lewis's many honors include a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music received the American Book Award. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Composition & Historical Musicology at Columbia University.