George Lewis

Lewis has received three honorary degrees: Doctor of Music from the University of Edinburgh in 2015; Doctor of Humane Letters from New College of Florida in 2017, and Doctor of Music from Harvard University in 2018.

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.

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 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.

Lewis is featured extensively in Unyazi of the Bushveld (2005), a documentary about the first symposium of electronic music held in Africa, directed by Aryan Kaganof.

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.

Lewis has long been active in creating and performing with interactive computer systems, most notably his software called Voyager, which "listens to" and reacts to live performers. 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. Lewis and Ritter performed at venues in North America and Europe, including Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Verona Jazz Festival, Art Institute of Chicago, The Kitchen (New York City), New Music America 1989 (New York City), The Alternative Museum (New York City), A Space (Toronto), and the MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Lewis graduated from Yale University in 1974 with a degree in philosophy. In the 1980s, he succeeded Rhys Chatham as the music director of The Kitchen. Since 2004, he has served as Edward H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University in New York City, where he is now Vice-Chair of the Department of Music. He previously taught at the University of California, San Diego. In 2002, Lewis received a MacArthur Fellowship. He has also received 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.

George Emanuel Lewis (born July 14, 1952) is an American composer, electronic performer, installation artist, trombone player, and scholar in the fields of improvisation and experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971 and is a pioneer of computer music.