Three George Lewis premieres on both sides of the globe
George Lewis features at Melbourne Jazz Festival on Saturday 17 October with three of his compositions, including the world premieres of two new works commissioned by the Monash Art Ensemble: 'Le Negrier' and 'Is Our Machines Learning Yet?'.
Bringing together staff and students from the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance alongside musicians from ELISION, this ambitious collaboration celebrates the spirit of experimentation, creative risk-taking and musical innovation that has defined Lewis’ remarkable career.
And on the other side of the world, also on Saturday, Zubin Kanga premieres Lewis' 'Blombos Playground' for piano and electronics at the Southbank Centre.
'Blombos Playground' is a new milestone in Lewis' decades of human-computer innovation, combining Kanga as live keyboardist with two AI improvising systems, Voyager and Somax.
Voyager is Lewis’ iconic interactive software system which he has been continuously developing over four decades. It responds to the live performer like a natural improvisor with its own unique personality. Somax, a machine-learning-based system developed at IRCAM in Paris, has been trained on Kanga’s improvisations to become a kind of improvising AI doppelgänger.
In 'Blombos Playground', the two systems are combined as SoVo, a new hybrid AI improvising system, performing and improvising with Kanga on three virtual keyboard instruments swirling across multiple speakers, in a breathtaking dialogue between real and virtual creativity.
