George Lewis: Interactive Music of George Lewis

Following his CIRMMT Distinguished Lecture at 4:30pm, George Lewis and Lori Freedman will perform using computer-driven Yamaha Disklavier grand pianos.

 

Lewis.jpg Interactive Music of George Lewis
George Lewis, trombone
Lori Freedman, bass clarinet
Two computer-driven Yamaha Disklavier grand pianos

 

Concert program:

Interactive Trio (2007)

George Lewis, trombone
Lori Freedman, bass clarinet

Interactive Duo (2007)

George Lewis, trombone
Lori Freedman, bass clarinet

 

 

George Lewis and Lori Freedman are performing live with a computer music composition that analyzes an improvisor’s performance in real time, generating both complex responses to the performance, and independent behavior arising from the program’s own internal processes.  For Lewis, notions about the nature and function of music are embedded in the structure of software-based music systems.  As a kind of computer music-making embodying improvisative aesthetics and musical practices, Lewis's work intersects with critical histories of new media, interactive music, and American experimentalism, as well as ethnographic, historical, music-theoretical, and many other modes of work on improvisation.


Lori Freedman is known internationally as one of Canada's most provocative and creative performers. Her work includes contemporary, improvised and electroacoustic music, with frequent collaborations with dance, theatre and visual artists. Over thirty composers have written solo bass clarinet music for her and her work has been recorded on 24 commercial CDs. Just prior to the release of HUSKLESS! (Artifact 20) she received the 1998 Freddie Stone Award for the "demonstration of outstanding leadership, integrity and excellence in the area of contemporary music and jazz". That debut CD won her the nomination of a Prairie Music Award, 2000 for the "Most Outstanding Classical Recording". The National Jazz Awards recently nominated her for Clarinetist of the Year 2003. Freedman has been featured on three concerts in the first edition of Musiques Nouvelles de Montréal in addition to an invitation by Toronto's ArrayMusic to be one of three featured artists in their Scratch Festival, and she was one of three Canadian clarinetists featured in Clair et Net at Montréal’s Théâtre La Chapelle. In each of these festivals she was commissioned to compose new works. Her most recent commission was from Shakespeare in the Ruins (Winnipeg): to write and direct the music for their 2004 production of Macbeth.

George Lewis, improvisor-trombonist, composer and computer/installation artist, studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. The recipient of a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship in 2002, a Cal Arts/Alpert Award in the Arts in 1999, and numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lewis has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work as composer, improvisor, performer and interpreter is documented on more than 120 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 forthcoming book, "Power Stronger Than Itself:  The AACM and American Experimental Music" will be published in October 2007 by the University of Chicago Press.