IICSI Researcher Wins Doris Duke Award

IICSI researcher George E. Lewis has been granted a Doris Duke Artist Award from the New York-based foundation dedicated “to improv[ing] the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being.” Dr. Lewis received the award as “a composer and trombonist whose audacious experimentalism has pushed both jazz and contemporary classical music forward.” His recent works include the opera Afterword, presented in the USA, the UK, and the Czech Republic; Remains of the Sky, an interactive installation with multichannel sound and light, composed for the James Turrell Skyspace at Rice University; and Soundlines: A Dreaming Track, premiered by the International Contemporary Ensemble at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Noon To Midnight concerts in 2019. Lewis is also an award-winning author and a pioneer of interactive computer music, creating programs that improvise in real time with human musicians. Since 2004, he has been the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. He received his Doris Duke Award in the “jazz” category, along with composer, percussionist and teacher Terri Lyne Carrington.