This sponsored article is part of a paid partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music.
George Lewis is one of the most internationally-renowned artists in the realm of avant-garde music today – and rightfully so. A true polymath, he has worn the hats of composer, improviser, musicologist, scholar, educator, and pioneer in electronic and computer music. His accolades include MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, and an American Book Award for his book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. But despite what some might see as an intimidating resumé, Lewis’ career is a wholeheartedly communal practice and uplifts those who, like himself, are often situated on the outskirts of the mainstream.
Back in 1971, at the age of 19, Lewis was introduced to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) – the legendary incubator for (primarily Black) jazz and avant-garde musicians on the South Side of Chicago, whose early members included Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, and Phil Cohran. Coming in as a Yale University student, it was a bit of a risk for Lewis to commit to diving into the uncertain territory of DIY modern music. In our recent interview, he explained: “[The AACM] said, ‘you have to be very clear on whether you want to do this or not,’ because they didn’t want to be blamed if it didn’t work out.” But over time, Lewis found himself continually drawn to the AACM. “Suddenly, I saw I was involved in it, and I just kept being involved. I kept meeting interesting and supportive people. At a certain point, I realized I was in a community.”
Today, all of Lewis’ work seeks to extend this doctrine of cultivating spaces for Black musicians. He currently teaches music composition and musicology at Columbia University; was recently appointed as the Artistic Director for the International Contemporary Ensemble; and heads several other engagements and initiatives like Composing While Black – a collection of essays and an ongoing concert series championing music by Black artists.
George Lewis — Courtesy of the Curtis Institute of Music
“Society wasn’t counting on Black composers, so that’s what [the folks at AACM] felt they needed to develop. I maintain that philosophy with International Contemporary Ensemble, with Composing While Black events, and by trying to make sure Columbia University has a healthy Afrodiasporic graduate student cohort. That’s the first thing, and then to help them solve the problems.”
This humanistic approach also appears in Lewis’ compositional practice, particularly his longtime use of AI. His “Voyager” interactive computer programs were the first to develop a gestural recognition system in which the software responds in real time to improvise with other (living) musicians. Many artists today argue against using AI to make art, as it pilfers already-made works as generative material (often for a profit); runs into ethical gray areas of appropriation and exploitation of marginalized (and even deceased) artists; and is likely bad for the environment. But Lewis has been considering the ethics of AI for decades.
“I’ve been doing my own AI projects for 45 years. The new AI technology seems more concerned with how you use it as a tool of power. My machines listen to people and interact with them. That seems very minoritarian in contemporary AI thinking. Maybe that’s an odd thing about the society we live in – the machines we have represent the community of thought and culture that produce them, and now, listening is not prioritized.”
Next month, Lewis’ newest opera, The Comet, will receive its East Coast premiere at the Curtis Institute of Music. Lewis was composer-in-residence at Curtis during the 2023-24 season, where he taught composition lessons, had several works performed by the contemporary music ensemble, received an honorary doctorate, and gave a commencement address.
For the Nov. 2 presentation of The Comet / Poppea, Lewis’ opera inspired by the W.E.B. DuBois short story “The Comet” (1924) is juxtaposed with Claudio Monteverdi’s final opera, L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643). The production is directed and conceived by Yuval Sharon, who was working on a staging of Monteverdi when he met Lewis at an opera conference. Having just read “The Comet,” the two landed upon the philosophical concept of “double consciousness” – a term coined by DuBois in the early 20th century to describe the experience of marginalized peoples having two perceptions of self in an imperialist, oppressive society that relies on them fitting a specific narrative.
“‘The Comet’ is a proto-Afrofuturist short story,” Lewis observes. “A comet kills many people when it hits the earth. The only two people who find each other are a Black man and a white woman from very different classes. They’re faced with a lot of dilemmas. DuBois was thinking about what happens if white supremacy is removed – and this is the most extreme way of removing it.”
The two stories centuries apart are linked abstractly, though with intention. Seneca, a character in Poppea, was a stoic historic philosopher. In contemplating stoicism and the character’s impact on the simultaneous storytelling in the production, Lewis recalls, “I’ve often had a sense in which Black people are called upon to be stoic with a small ‘s.’ They used to ask John Coltrane all the time, ‘Why are you angry?’ They just had the bombing of those girls at Birmingham. They’ve been lynching people for 100 years. There’s slavery for 300-400 years. There’s been all kinds of Jim Crow discrimination, families destroyed, and they’re asking him this. He says, ‘Actually, I just wanted to give people a sense of the many wonderful things that are in the universe.’ That’s stoic, meaning we’re going to withstand all of this – and it’s ridiculous.”
Marc Lowenstein, Yuval Sharon, Luther Lewis, and George Lewis in rehearsal for “The Comet / Poppea” — Photo by Erin Baiano, courtesy of The Industry
The Comet / Poppea is miraculously performed on a continuously rotating stage designed by Mimi Lien – half the stage is set in New York in the 20s, and the other half in ancient Rome. “If you’re sitting on one side, you get a completely different view than if you’re sitting on the other, but you get views of both as it spins,” Lewis explains. “There’s some indeterminacy built in – where you get seated in the audience determines part of what you hear. But all the actual scenes and where they come in are set.”
Sharon and librettist Douglas Kearney created the conditions for Lewis to compose in his own artistic voice, rather than an expected fusion of genre pointing towards either era the opera takes place in. Written for ten instrumentalists including harpsichord, viola da gamba, and theorbo alongside modern instruments, the musicians are split across two ensembles: one realizing Lewis’ inventive score, and the other performing 17th century continuo-style Italian operatic writing. The singers move back and forth between the two worlds, too. “There’s time travel and parallel universes, which makes it Afrofuturist in that sense,” Lewis describes.
Even with the conception of new work, Lewis considers his ongoing praxis; all but one of the singers cast in the Poppea ensemble are Black, which is intentional. “They’re trained to do this music, but no one ever asks them,” he acknowledges. As Sharon writes in the program, a major tenet of the work is “pointing out [opera’s] tendencies towards exclusion while offering up a counter-proposal.” Through an unorthodox collision of musical idioms and sociopolitical contexts, Lewis demonstrates a commitment to collectivist movement(s); and coaxes us to examine both future and past to ascertain what time it is on the clock of the world.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
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