International Contemporary Ensemble And The New York Public Library For The Performing Arts Present OPENICE: COLLECTING GEORGE LEWIS

On Monday, March 11, 2019 at 6pm, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts present OpenICE: Collecting George Lewis at The Bruno Walter Auditorium.

American composer, electronic performer, installation artist, trombone player, and improvisation and experimental music scholar George Lewis has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 1971 and is a pioneer of computer music. Lewis joins Claire Chase, soloist, collaborative artist, curator, and founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble for a conversation on aesthetics, practices, and the evolution of Lewis' Emergent for flute and electronics. Now in its third year, the "OpenICE: Collecting" series invites the audience to participate in the creation of archival entries related to performer-composer performer collaborations. Each event is documented and made available for future generations of performers to learn the origin stories of radical works from the creative collaborations of the International Contemporary Ensemble.

The program is part of ICE's OpenICE initiative, a project aiming to share the most essential elements of ICE's working process - creation, collaboration, and performance - with a wider audience, through free concert and activity programming. OpenICE engages new audiences in open workshops, conversations with artists, and performances in alternative venues. With OpenICE, cost is no barrier to joining the community of new music.

Program Information
OpenICE: Collecting George Lewis
Monday, March 11, 2019 at 6pm
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, The Bruno Walter Auditorium
111 Amsterdam Avenue | New York, NY 10023
Tickets: Free. Reservation required at http://bit.ly/CollectingGeorgeLewis
Link: https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2019/05/23/collecting-george-lewis

Performers:
George Lewis, composer
Claire Chase, flute

About George Lewis
George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Lewis's other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Walker Fellowship (2011), an Alpert Award in the Arts (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 in electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, and notated and improvisative forms is documented on more than 150 recordings. His work has been presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Mivos Quartet, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, London Sinfonietta, Spektral Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Wet Ink, Ensemble Erik Satie, Eco Ensemble, and others, with commissions from American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Harvestworks, Ensemble Either/Or, Orkestra Futura, Turning Point Ensemble, Studio Dan, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, IRCAM, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others.

Lewis has served as Fromm Visiting Professor of Music, Harvard University; Ernest Bloch Visiting Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley; Paul Fromm Composer in Residence, American Academy in Rome; Resident Scholar, Center for Disciplinary Innovation, University of Chicago; and CAC Fitt Artist in Residence, Brown University. Lewis received the 2012 SEAMUS Award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and his book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society's Music in American Culture Award; Lewis was elected to Honorary Membership in the Society in 2016. Lewis is the co-editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (2016), and his opera Afterword (2015), commissioned by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago, has been performed in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic.

In 2015, Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Music (DMus, honoris causa) from the University of Edinburgh. In 2017, Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (PhD, honoris causa) from New College of Florida. In 2017 Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Music from Harvard University.

Professor Lewis came to Columbia in 2004, having previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Koninklijke Conservatorium Den Haag, and Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institute.

About the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective that is transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, the Ensemble explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The Ensemble's 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble's programming since its founding in 2001, and the group's recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music's present.

A recipient of the American Music Center's Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, ICE was also named the 2014 Musical America Ensemble of the Year. The group currently serves as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' Mostly Mozart Festival, and previously led a five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. ICE was featured at the Ojai Music Festival from 2015 to 2017, and at recent festivals abroad such as gmem-CNCM-marseille and Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Mexico City. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, The Stone, ice floes at Greenland's Diskotek Sessions, and boats on the Amazon River.

New initiatives include OpenICE, made possible with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which offers free concerts and related programming wherever ICE performs, and enables a working process with composers to unfold in public settings. DigitICE, a free online library of over 350 streaming videos, catalogues the Ensemble's performances. ICE's First Page program is a commissioning consortium that fosters close collaborations between performers, composers, and listeners as new music is developed. EntICE, a side-by-side education program, places ICE musicians within youth orchestras as they premiere new commissioned works together; inaugural EntICE partners include Youth Orchestra Los Angeles and The People's Music School in Chicago. Summer activities include Ensemble Evolution at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, in which young professionals perform with ICE and attend workshops on topics from interpretation to concert production. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org.