February 15, 2025, 7 PM »Composing While Black. Afrodiasporic New Music Today«
with Harald Kisiedu, George E. Lewis and Musa Okwonga

M.Bassy is realizing the interdisciplinary music series »Composing While Black. Afrodiasporic New Music Today«, co-curated by the musicologist, author and saxophonist Harald Kisiedu.

The series at M.Bassy allows the audience to gain new perspectives on Afrodiasporic composers not only as participatory creative actors, but also as social figures within widely ramified, complexly networked communities in the ever-expanding universe of musical possibilities. In four hybrid event formats, Harald Kisiedu will enter a personal dialog with each guest under the moderation of journalist and musician Musa Okwonga. In music talks, joint listening sessions and experimental live music performances, we will develop new perceptions on a multisensory of Afrodiasporic New Music as an intercultural, cross-generational space of innovation, contemporary discourse and identity building.

The first event will be with the American composer, musicologist, and trombonist George E. Lewis who is also professor of American Music at Columbia University and currently fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris working on »Finding the Sound of Freedom: Artificial Intelligence in Real-Time Musical Creativity«. He will be joined by Harald Kisiedu for a music talk, listening session and opera screening.

Harald Kisiedu

Harald Kisiedu is a musicologist, author and musician who completed his doctorate at Columbia University. New York, USA and now lives in Hamburg. His main areas of interest include jazz as a global phenomenon, classical and experimental music of the African diaspora, music and politics, improvisation and Wagner. As a saxophonist, he has performed with Branford Marsalis, George E. Lewis, Henry Grimes, Hannibal Lokumbe and Champion Jack Dupree, among others. He was a lecturer at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music and Theatre in Leipzig and at the Institute of Music at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. His book »European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany: 1950-1975« was published in 2020. In 2023, together with George E. Lewis, he published the essay collection »Composing While Black. Afrodiasporic New Music Today«.

George E. Lewis

George E. Lewis (b. 1952) is an American composer, musicologist and trombonist. He is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University and Area Chair in Composition in the Department of Historical Musicology. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. Other honors for Lewis include the Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation (2002), and the Guggenheim Foundation (2015). He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971 and his work in electronic and computer-based music and multimedia installation, as well as notated and improvised formats, has been performed by ensembles worldwide. He is widely recognized as a pioneer of interactive computer music. His book »A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music« (2008) received the American Book Award and the American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut are co-editors of the two-volume »Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies« (2016). Lewis has received honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, New College of Florida and Harvard University. He is currently working as a fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris on the project »Finding the Sound of Freedom: Artificial Intelligence in Real-Time Musical Creativity«.

Musa Okwonga

Musa Okwonga, born in London in 1979, is a British-Ugandan writer, journalist, and musician. Okwonga has written numerous essays and articles on culture, racism, gender, music, sports, politics, and technology. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian, The Independent, The New Statesman, and The New York Times, among others, as well as in Die Zeit and taz. He has published two books on soccer, as well as a volume of poetry. He has lived in Berlin-Friedrichshain since 2014.

Event #1: Music Talk, Listening Session & Opera Screening with George E. Lewis & Harald Kisiedu, moderated by Musa Okwonga