Artificial Life: Flexible Instrumentation Score & Parts

This work inverts everything your ensemble expects from a score. Rather than prescribing every note, Lewis hands control to your performers through elegantly designed constraints, making improvisation feel like a structured conversation instead of a leap into the unknown. The flexibility in instrumentation and duration means you can scale it to your actual ensemble and concert needs, and the open-ended nature guarantees that no two performances will ever sound the same.

Like watching a flock of birds turn in unison without a leader, or listening to a complex ecosystem where each voice has autonomy yet remains part of a larger whole. The soundscape is contemporary, spacious, and frequently surprising, with moments of texture and silence that emerge organically rather than being predetermined.

Ensembles ready to trust their musicians' decision-making, from adventurous high school orchestras to college new music ensembles to community improvisation groups. This works equally well for players who have never improvised and for those fluent in it; the instruction pages level the field by removing the pressure to "make something up" and replacing it with clear parameters.

• Read your group's instruction pages thoroughly before the first rehearsal and have musicians sit with them individually first. These pages contain the essential logic of their part, and early familiarity prevents confusion during the collective experience.
• Establish a clear start signal and ending procedure among all sections before rehearsing the improvisation itself. With no conductor, your ensemble needs explicit agreement on these bookends.
• Begin with slower, sparser playing to let the instruction-following become natural before the density and complexity build. This allows performers to build confidence in their agency.
• Schedule multiple run-throughs rather than stopping to correct details. Each performance creates new material for listening and refinement in a way that sectional drilling cannot.

Feature this on a new music or experimental concert where it can breathe as the centerpiece, or use it as a culminating ensemble project that showcases how your musicians can think independently within structure. Its novelty also makes it an excellent choice for demonstrating your program's commitment to 21st-century practice and composer intent.

• Reading and interpreting graphic or instructional notation systems
• Real-time listening and responding to ensemble sound
• Making compositional choices within defined constraints
• Collaborative decision-making without a conductor
• Confidence improvising in a supported, structured context