George Lewis Wins ‘Genius’ Grant

  I  

On Tuesday, trombonist George Lewis was named one of the 24 winners the annual “genius grants” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. With the Fellowship award, the AACM stalwart will receive a total of $500,000 over five years from the Chicago-based foundation.

Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the Fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight and potential to effect positive change. The purpose of MacArthur Fellowships is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of society at large.

Lewis is the second member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians to win the award, as composer Anthony Braxton won in 1994.

Lewis is currently a music professor at the University of California at San Diego; and he’s currently spending the semester at the University of California at Irvine.



  • Zakir_Hussain_2011_Symphony_Center_copy.jpg

    “Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.

  • ART7087_Mike_Stern_by_Sandrine_Lee_72dpi_RGB_PR8391_copy.jpg

    “I love doing ballads,” Mike Stern says. “It’s just a part of me, some part of emotionally how I feel sometimes.”

  • KennedyCenter.jpg

    Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

  • Jernberg_Photo_Jon_Edergren_2_copy.jpg

    “With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.

  • herb1.jpeg

    Robertson had a penetrating, pliant sound with a remarkable softness at its center.


On Sale Now
February 2025
Sullivan Fortner
Look Inside
Subscribe
Print | Digital | iPad