George E. Lewis

George Emanuel Lewis (born July 14, 1952) is an American composer, trombonist, and musicologist. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, when he joined the organization at the age of 19. His music spans genres including avant-garde jazz, contemporary classical and experimental music. He is renowned for his work as an improvising trombonist and considered a pioneer of computer music, which he began pursuing in the late 1970s; in the 1980s he created Voyager, an improvising software that he has used in interactive performances. and the American Book Award Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Composition & Historical Musicology at Columbia University. Early life George E. Lewis was born on July 14, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, George Thomas Lewis, was a postal worker who studied electronics under the GI Bill and had a deep love of jazz music; his mother, Cornelia Griffith Lewis, liked blues, soul, and R&B singers. An African-American teacher convinced Lewis’s parents to enroll him at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, where he started classes at the age of nine. Lewis attended the Lab