George E. Lewis
Columbia University, Music
gl2140@columbia.edu
George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. He is a 2002 MacArthur Fellow and a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971. His compositions are documented on more than 140 recordings and have been presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Wet Ink, Ensemble Erik Satie, Eco Ensemble, and others, with commissions from American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Harvestworks, Ensemble Either/Or, Orkestra Futura, Turning Point Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, IRCAM, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others. Most recently, Lewis has served as Ernest Bloch Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley; Paul Fromm Composer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome; and Resident Scholar at the University of Chicago’s Center for Disciplinary Innovation. Lewis received the 2012 SEAMUS Award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and his widely acclaimed book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society’s first Music in American Culture Award. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut are co-editors of the forthcoming two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies.
Daniel Fischlin
University of Guelph, English and Theatre Studies
dfischli@uoguelph.ca
Daniel Fischlin is a University Research Chair at the University of Guelph. A core conceptor and researcher associated with the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice Project (ICASP) and now with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), Fischlin also co-edits Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études Critiques en improvisation and is the General Series Editor of the Duke University Press series devoted to improvisation, community, and social practice. He has published widely in music and social justice, and most recently co-authored (with George Lipsitz and Ajay Heble) The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (Duke UP). A co-owner of the community-facing improv space in Guelph called Silence, Fischlin is also active as a performing musician.