George Lewis, Artistic Director

George Lewis is an American composer, musicologist and trombonist. He is Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music and Area Chair in Composition at Columbia University, and 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’s work is presented by ensembles worldwide, published by Edition Peters.  A Yamaha Artist, Lewis is widely regarded as a pioneer in the creation of computer programs that improvise in concert with human musicians.His books include A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008), the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volumes 1 & 2 (2016, co-edited with Benjamin Piekut), and Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today/Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute (2023, co-edited with Harald Kisiedu). His opera The Comet (2024) was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize.  Lewis holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New England Conservatory, New College of Florida, Birmingham City University, and Curtis Institute of Music, among others (https://music.columbia.edu/bios/george-e-lewis).