George Lewis: Afterword, The AACM (as) Opera + International Contemporary Ensemble

Afterword is an opera developed by George Lewis with longtime collaborators Catherine Sullivan and Sean Griffin, as an aesthetic extension of Lewis’s 2008 book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, (University of Chicago Press) which received the American Book Award.

Born on the South Side of Chicago and turning 50 this year,  (AACM) has played a major role in American experimental music, and its ardent experimentation and radical collectivist politics are the inspiration behind Lewis’s first operatic venture.

The opera explores the historical periods through which the AACM has lived – the Great Migration, the urbanization of American life, decolonization and the civil rights struggle – and the evolving relationships this organization has forged among culture, politics, race and personal expression. The work also foregrounds the AACM as a creative collective noted for its revolutionary ideas, now part of the legacy of experimental practice, and the diversity of its music making.

The artists will be in residence at Roulette with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and three singers for four days and will present Act I of Afterword on May 22 & 23, 2015. The work receives its premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in Fall 2015 and returns to Roulette in its complete form in our 2016 schedule.

George Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. A MacArthur Fellow, Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. A member of the AACM since 1971, Lewis’s work has been commissioned and presented by orchestras and ensembles in this country and Europe.

Composer and director Sean Griffin is the Director of Opera Povera, an interdisciplinary consortium devoted to the creation and performance of new operatic and interdisciplinary performance and exhibition projects for which he received a grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation in 2011. Recently, he was a Mellon Fellow for Arts Practice & Scholarship at the University of Chicago’s Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. Griffin has received numerous residencies, including Yaddo, MacDowell, and EMPAC, and his collaborative works have been presented at venues including REDCAT, LACMA, MATA Festival, and the Tate Modern.

Catherine Sullivan has produced several films, performances and theater works wherein the performers are often coping with written texts, stylistic economies, re-enactments of historic performances, gestural and choreographic regimes, and conceptual orthodoxies. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Secession, Vienna; Opéra de Lyon, Lyon;  and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of our time by developing innovative new works and new strategies for audience engagement. Since its founding in 2001, ICE has premiered over 500 compositions in venues spanning from alternative spaces to concert halls around the world. The ensemble was most recently named Musical America Worldwide’s Ensemble of the Year in 2013.