Composer Portrait of GEORGE LEWIS Held at Miller Theatre 11/12

Miller Theatre At Columbia University School of the Arts continues the 12th season of its renowned Composer Portraits with George Lewis.

International Contemporary Ensemble, with guest conductor and percussionist Steven Schick and poet Quincy Troupe, performs highlights from the composer's eclectic career,
including a world premiere written especially for ICE

Saturday, November 12, 8:00 p.m.

Tickets: $25 • CU Students: $7 • All other students: $15 with valid ID

Click here to watch a video interview about the program with George Lewis

From Miller Theatre Director Melissa Smey:
"I am so proud to present this Composer Portrait of Columbia's own George Lewis. His ability to fuse influences as diverse as hip-hop, computer music, and contemporary improvisation makes him a true visionary. And his myriad contributions as a scholar, performer, writer, and teacher make him one of Columbia University's stars. It gives me great pleasure to be able to share his work with our audience, and I am thrilled to present the world premiere of his new work for ICE on the Miller stage."

Composer Portraits

Miller Theatre's signature series shines the spotlight on a single contemporary composer in every concert, introducing audiences to the most important musical voices of our time. This season features a fascinatingly diverse group of composers in a series that will present 3 new commissions, 8 world premieres, 4 U.S. premieres, and 2 New York premieres. Plus, every composer will participate in an onstage discussion at his or her Portrait.

Saturday, November 12, 8:00 p.m.
George Lewis
MacArthur genius George Lewis has a passion for exploring and obliterating genre boundaries. His relentlessly eclectic style fuses diverse influences, from hip hop to computer music to contemporary improvisation, creating "a mesmerizing sonic universe," says the Los Angeles Times. His wide-ranging background-as a performer with Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, a professor and scholar at Columbia, and a former curator at the iconic downtown multi-arts venue The Kitchen-influences his work as a composer. ICE is joined by percussionist and conductor Steven Schick in this program, featuring a brand new work written especially for them, and poet Quincy Troupe appears as narrator. Composer and conductor Richard Carrick leads an onstage discussion with Lewis following intermission.

ARTISTS: International Contemporary Ensemble
Steven Schick, percussion and conductor
Quincy Troupe, narrator

PROGRAM: North Star Boogaloo (1996)
Ikons (2010)
Collage (1995)
Artificial Life (2007)
The Will to Adorn (2011), world premiere

BIOS: George Lewis (b. 1952) is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002, an Alpert Award in the Arts in 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 as composer, improvisor, performer and interpreter explores electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated and improvisative forms, and is documented on more than 140 recordings. His oral history is archived in Yale University's collection of "Major Figures in American Music," and his compositions and installations have been presented by the American Composers Orchestra, Dinosaur Annex, Wet Ink, the Turning Point Ensemble, Ensemble Erik Satie, Works and Process, the S.E.M. Ensemble, the NOW Orchestra, Deutschlandradio Kultur Berlin, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, and others, with commissions from the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, OPUS (Paris), IRCAM, Musee des Sciences et des Industries La Villette, Harvestworks, Studio Museum in Harlem, the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others. His widely acclaimed book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) is a recipient of the 2009 American Book Award.

International Contemporary Ensemble
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is dedicated to reshaping the way music is created and experienced. With a flexible roster of 33 leading instrumentalists performing in forces ranging from solos to large ensembles, ICE functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of our time by developing innovative new works and pursuing groundbreaking strategies for audience engagement. In an era of radical change, ICE redefines concert music as it brings together new work and new listeners. Since its founding in 2001, ICE has premiered over 500 compositions, the bulk of them by emerging composers, in venues ranging from Lincoln Center to galleries, bars, schools, and public spaces around the world. The ensemble has released acclaimed albums on the Nonesuch, Kairos, Bridge, Naxos, Tzadik, New Focus, and New Amsterdam labels, with several forthcoming releases on Mode Records. ICE accepted a three-year position as Artists-in-Residence at the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2011, curating programs and performing concerts alongside artists such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Peter Serkin. Highlights of the current season include headline performances at Miller Theatre, a residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and new commissions by Georges Aperghis, Chaya Czernowin, David Lang, and George Lewis. With leading support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ICE launched ICElab in early 2011. This new program places teams of ICE musicians in close collaboration with six emerging composers each year to develop works that push the boundaries of musical exploration. ICElab projects will be featured in more than one hundred performances from 2011-2014 and documented online through DigitICE, a new online venue.

Steven Schick
Percussionist, conductor and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. For the past thirty years he has championed contemporary percussion music as a performer and teacher, by commissioning and premiering more than one hundred new works for percussion. Schick is Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego and a Consulting Artist in Percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. He was the percussionist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars of New York City from 1992-2002, and from 2000 to 2004 served as Artistic Director of the Centre International de Percussion de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland. Schick is founder and Artistic Director of the percussion group, "red fish blue fish," and director of "Roots and Rhizomes," a summer course on contemporary percussion music hosted at the Banff Centre for the Arts. In 2007 assumed the post of Music Director and conductor of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, and is a regular guest conductor of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). In 2011 Steven Schick was named Artistic Director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

Upcoming Composer Portraits at Miller Theatre
Single tickets: $25 • Subscriptions: $120 for 6 concerts; $80 for 4 concerts

John Zorn Friday, December 9
Karin Rehnqvist Thursday, March 22
Hilda Paredes Saturday, May 12
Georges Aperghis Thursday, May 24

Columbia University's Miller Theatre is located north of the Main Campus Gate
at 116th St. & Broadway on the ground floor of Dodge Hall.

Subscriptions and single tickets are now available online at www.millertheatre.com.
The public may also purchase tickets through the Miller Theatre Box Office
in person or at 212/854-7799, M-F, 12-6 p.m.