George Lewis is an American composer, musicologist, computer installation artist, and trombonist. At Columbia University, he is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music and serves as Area Chair in Composition and Faculty in Historical Musicology and Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Lewis is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the British Academy, is a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and was honored as a 2002 MacArthur Fellow. Lewis has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971. He is widely considered a pioneer of interactive computer music, developing programs that improvise together with human musicians. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, New College of Florida, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania, among other academic institutions. His opera The Comet was a 2025 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
