Steve Lehman

photo by Andrea Boccalini

Steve Lehman is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across a broad spectrum of experimental musical idioms. Lehman’s pieces for large orchestra and chamber ensembles have been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), So Percussion, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, the JACK Quartet, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the Talea Ensemble, and by the pianist Marilyn Nonken. His recent recording, Mise en Abîme, was chosen as the #1 Jazz Album of 2014 by NPR Music and The Los Angeles Times.

The recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award, Lehman is an alto saxophonist who has performed and recorded nationally and internationally with his own ensembles and with those led by Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, George Lewis, Jason Moran, Georgia-Anne Muldrow, Meshell Ndegeocello, and High Priest of Anti-Pop Consortium, among many others. He has taught undergraduate courses at Columbia University, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Wesleyan University, Stevens Institute of Technology and New School University, and has presented lectures at Amherst College, UC Berkeley, The Berklee School of Music, The Banff Centre, The Royal Academy of Music in London, and IRCAM in Paris, where he was a 2011 research fellow.

Program Note:

Ten Threshold Studies makes use of elastic rhythms and shadowy spectral harmonies to explore the nature of hearing and perception in modern day music.”