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George Lewis

George Lewis leads a discussion: There are Black composers in the future at the Center for Fiction on Saturday May 6. A wide-ranging discussion of the past, present and future of contemporary music With George LewisHannah KendallJessie Cox, and Donna Lee Davidson.

George Lewis is an composer, performer, and scholar.  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.

George’s bio