VT045 | George Lewis: If we get what we want, what will it sound like?

25/11/2025 10 min
VT045 | George Lewis: If we get what we want, what will it sound like?

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Episode Synopsis

Send us a textA few days before ars ad hoc presents the Portuguese premiere of his String Quartet 2.5 "Playing with Seeds" [2017] at the Serralves Museum, American composer George E. Lewis  (Chicago, 1952) shares some reflections on his long-standing fascination with the classical trope of depiction in American music. A professor in Columbia University’s Department of Music and the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Lewis is also the Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as co-editor and co-author of "Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today." While pondering the question, “If we get what we want, what will it sound like?”, Lewis has been creating a series of musical meditations on the sound of decolonisation. Can music function as sociological research? Well, why not?credits: Weathering [2023], for symphonic orchestra | American Composers Orchestra; Vimbayi Kaziboni > conductorvortextemporum.com