Search - George Lewis :: Changing With the Times

Schooled in Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in the 1960s, trombonist and composer George Lewis has recorded amply in avant-garde jazz contexts. But he's an exciting electronic music specialist, having developed Voyager, his own interactive improvising program. His magnum opus, though, is this CD. Lewis pushes his trombone to the fore in round exclamations and aching jabs into extended tonalities. The pieces here are each narrated by, among others, poets Jerome Rothenberg, Bernard Mixon, and Quincy Troupe. Lewis's compositions feed off avant jazz's open-ended languages but also delve into spacious instrumental spreads that gather their sometimes stark strength from Ruth Neville's piano, Mary Oliver's viola, and Douglas Ewart's expert clarinets and shakuhachi. --Andrew Bartlett