Program Notes - Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

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George E. Lewis: The Will to Adorn (2011, rev. 2012) Lewis has taken the title for his new piece from a 1934 essay by Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (available online). Key phrases for Lewis are: “The stark, trimmed phrases of the Occident seem too bare,” “decorating a decoration,” and “one always finds a glut of gaudy calendars.” However, the identification of “the will to adorn” as characteristic of a particular racial-cultural group—an identification no doubt defensible eight decades ago as an assertion of identity—is here not accepted without question. Describing his interest as “adornment as a compositional attitude or method,” Lewis distances himself from any naive view of it as a marker, and his references include not only “those amazing church hats worn by African American women” but also ideas of “saturation” put forward by the French composer Franck Bedrossian. He has further proposed the following longer quotation from Hurston’s essay as relevant to his composition: I saw in Mobile a room in which there was an over-stuffed mohair living-room suite, an imitation mahogany bed and chifferobe, a console victrola. The walls were gaily papered with Sunday supplements of the Mobile Register. There were seven calendars and three wall pockets. One of them was decorated with a lace doily. The mantel-shelf was covered with a scarf of deep home-made lace, looped up with a huge bow of pink crepe paper. Over the door was a huge lithograph showing the Treaty of Versailles being signed with a Waterman fountain pen. It was grotesque, yes. But it indicated the desire for beauwty. And decorating a decoration, as in the case of the doily on the gaudy wall pocket, did not seem out of place to the hostess. The feeling back of such an act is that there can never be enough of beauty, let alone too much. © Paul Griffiths, http://disgwylfa.com About the artists George E. Lewis serves as the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music and the Director of the Center for Jazz Studies 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 Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. A member of the 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 120 recordings. His published articles on music, experimental video, visual art, and cultural studies have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes. His book, Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, published by University of Chicago Press, was released in fall 2007. Steve Lehman is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across a broad spectrum of experi-
mental musical idioms. Lehman’s pieces for large orchestra and chamber ensembles have been performed by ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), So Percussion, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, The Jack String Quartet, members of the Argento and Wet Ink Ensembles, and the pianist Marilyn Nonken. An alto and sopranino saxophonist, Lehman has performed and recorded nationally and internationally with his own ensembles and with those led by Anthony Braxton, Dave Burrell, Mark Dresser, Vijay Iyer, Oliver Lake, Meshell Ndegeocello, and High Priest of Anti-Pop Consortium. Lehman is also a published scholar; his article in the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation, “I Love You with an Asterisk: African-American Experimental Composers and the French Jazz Press, 1970–1980,” is based on his Fulbright research in France. Lehman received his BA (2000) and MA in Composition (2002) from Wesleyan University where he studied under Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier, while concurrently working with Jackie McLean at the Hartt School of Music. Lehman is currently a doctoral candidate in Music Composition at Columbia University, where he is a departmental fellow and studies under Tristan Murail and George Lewis. His most recent recording, Travail, Transformation & Flow (Pi Records, 2009), was chosen as the #1 Jazz Album of the year by The New York Times. Nicole Margaret Mitchell is a creative flutist, composer, and bandleader. She was named Top Flutist 2010 by Downbeat’s Critic’s Polls and placed first as Downbeat’s Rising Star Flutist 2005–2010. She was awarded Jazz Flutist of the Year 2010 by the Jazz Journalist Association and Chicagoan of the Year 2006 by the Chicago Tribune. The founder of the critically acclaimed Black Earth Ensemble and Black Earth Strings, Mitchell’s compositions reach across sound worlds, integrating new ideas with moments in the legacies of jazz, gospel, pop, and African percussion to create a fascinating synthesis of “postmodern jazz.” With her ensembles, as a featured flutist, and as a music educator, Mitchell has been a highlight at art venues, festivals throughout Europe, the United States, and Canada. Mitchell has performed with creative luminaries including George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Lori Freedman, James Newton, Bill Dixon, and Muhal Richard Abrams. She also works on ongoing projects with Anthony Braxton, Ed Wilkerson, David Boykin, Rob Mazurek, Hamid Drake, and Avreeayl Ra. The first woman president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Mitchell works to raise respect and integrity for the improvised flute, to contribute her innovative voice to the jazz legacy, and to continue the bold and exciting directions that the AACM has charted for decades. Tyshawn Sorey composes works that embrace a basic paradox in contemporary experimental music, bridging technical precision and an acute sense of space with the raw, virtuosic energy of improvisation central to his work in avant-jazz collectives such as Fieldwork and the Steve Lehman Octet. As a pianist, drummer, and trombonist, Sorey has performed alongside leading improvisers of our time, including John Zorn, Muhal Richard Abrams, Steve Coleman, and Anthony Braxton, and had his work featured in major festivals throughout the United States. His work as a composer and performer has been featured on recordings from Firehouse 12 and Pi Records. He is currently
Page 1 and 2: Photo: Joshua Bright ICE (Internati
Page 3 and 4: George Lewis and Friends Steven Sch
Page 5: About the program George E. Lewis:
Page 9 and 10: Dance John Jota Leaños Imperial Si

Program Notes - Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

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