Revisit a conversation with George Lewis and Leila Adu Gilmore.
The International Contemporary Ensemble, led by George Lewis, introduces four composers and performers from The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) onstage for Composing While Black. With partners Adegoke Steve Colson and Iqua Colson, Thurman Barker, and Reggie Nicholson, the production will be rich with influence from many facets of the music industry, specifically jazz and improvisational practices.
Mar 19, 2025 | #Lobby Talk, #IRL
Skirball Salon: What does decolonization sound like?
Office Hours
Get Into It
George Lewis on Composing While Black
The AACM continues to ever more strongly exemplify the very sound of freedom.
Get Thee to the LIbrary
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
George Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (2008)
George Lewis and Harald Kisiedu, Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic Music Today (2023)
Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (2003)
Monique Roelofs and Michael Kelly, editors. Black Art and Aesthetics: Relationalities, Interiorities, Reckonings (2024)
Burke Stanton, Musicking in the Borders toward Decolonizing Methodologies (2018)
Read All About It
Village Voice | March 12, 2024
‘Composing While Black’ Rethinks Music in Time and Space
“The contemporary music world has predicated itself upon the ‘absence of Blackness.’”
Post Genre | Oct 1, 2023
Hearing Voices: A Conversation with George Lewis
“I have found curation to be a crucial site for fostering the kind of change I want to see in the various creative communities I’ve been part of over the years.”
The New York Times | April 8, 2022
Outspoken Composer to Lead International Contemporary Ensemble
“Lewis is an influential voice in the effort to “decolonize” classical music, at a time when the field is reckoning with questions about racial injustice and a legacy of exclusion.”
Musical America | August 29, 2023
A Pioneering Ensemble Enriches its Path
“We seek nothing less than a new consciousness for new music.”