George Lewis: Composer, performer

Dan Blacksberg: Trombone

Thurman Barker: Percussion

Eli Fountain: Percussion

Aiyun Huang: Percussion

The Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to George Lewis’s Calder, a composition for percussion and brass written in tribute to the American sculptor Alexander Calder. This performance is presented as part of the ongoing exhibition Endless Shout, which asks how, why, and where performance and improvisation can take place inside the museum. This event is free and open to the public.

Inspired by large, brightly colored mobiles for which Alexander Calder was renowned, Lewis’s composition for improvisors finds its players moving from station to station as if navigating the interlocking components of one of the artist’s free-floating sculptures.

Lewis has said that the work is also “an implicit homage to [composer] Earle Brown, whose work with the kind of mobile forms in my piece was so influenced by the sculptor.” This performance of Calder is especially significant given the fact that its subject was one of three generations of notable sculptors who called Philadelphia home; his grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, created the statue of William Penn that stands atop City Hall and helps define the city’s skyline.

This event is free and open to the public, with suggested registration. Register here.

Trombonist, composer and pioneer of electronic and computer music, George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. A member of the Association for theAdvancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music and went on to become the influential organization’s chronicler with his widely acclaimed book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, which received the American Book Award. His groundbreaking work in electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, and notated and improvisative forms is documented on more than 140 recordings, while his creative work has been presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia Orchestra, Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, and others. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy, Lewis’s other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (2002) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015).