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 130 recordings. His oral history is archived in Yale
University’s collection of “Major Figures in American Music,” and his published
articles on music, experimental video, visual art, and cultural studies have
appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes. His widely acclaimed
book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
(University of Chicago Press, 2008) is a 2009 winner of the American Book Award.