George Lewis in Berlin

George Lewis, a pivotal figure in early twenty-first century American music, is spending the academic year in Berlin, on a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg. He will be completing his new chamber opera Comet/Poppea, a hybrid work combining a setting of W. E. B. Du Bois's sci-fi story "The Comet" with an adaptation of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. Yuval Sharon will direct the inaugural production in New York and Long Beach in June 2021. While in Europe, Lewis will be collaborating with two renowned ensembles: first, the London Sinfonietta, for which he has co-curated — with Elaine Mitchener — a program of Jason Yarde, Leila Adu-Gilmore, Hannah Kendall, Tania León, Courtney Bryan, and Lewis himself (Oct. 28); and the Ensemble Modern, for which he has assembled an "Afro-Modernism" lineup of Alvin Singleton, Jessie Cox, Daniel Kidane, Andile Khumalo, and Kendall and León again (Nov. 7 in Essen, Nov. 13 in Frankfurt). The Sinfonietta concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3; whether any of the Modern material will travel the airwaves is unclear. If you want a marvelous survey of Lewis's musical world-view, watch the Spektral Quartet's Floating Lounge session with the composer, with a playlist ranging from Coltrane to Czernowin.