Annie Lewandowski is a composer and performer who works in song and improvisation. As an improviser on piano,
accordion, and electronics, she has performed and recorded with musicians including Fred Frith, the London Improvisers
Orchestra, Caroline Kraabel, Theresa Wong, Tim Feeney, CAGE, Sarah Hennies, Spinneret.s, and Doublends Vert. As a
singer, guitarist, and keyboardist, she has recorded with bands and ensembles including Emma Zunz, Xiu Xiu, The Curtains,
Former Ghosts, and Yarn/Wire. Her own band Powerdove has released ten recordings, including Machination (Murailles
Music, 2021) and Bitter Banquet (fo'c'sle records, 2018).
In 2017, Lewandowski began studying humpback whale song with pioneering bioacoustician Katy Payne. Her 2018
composition Cetus: Life After Life, for humpback whale song and chimes, traces the evolution of Hawaiian humpback
whale song from 1977-1981. Her project Siren: Composers of the Sea with artist and coder Kyle McDonald and scenic
designer Amy Rubin explores the meeting of multiple intelligences - human, humpback whale, and artificial. Siren has
been presented on Martha's Vineyard, at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, as part of the Neuroverse
festival in New York City, and at MASS MoCA. Lewandowski is currently working with Katy Payne, Chris Gabriele,
Michelle Fournet, Alia Payne, the Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium, and Kyle McDonald on a scientific and creative
project about humpback whale song and the Pacific Marine Heatwave.
Since 2023, Lewandowski has been leading a spring break course in marine conservation and creative collaboration in
partnership with the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts (MUS 1213).
Lewandowski has performed at festivals and venues across the United States and Europe, including the Casa da Música
(Porto, Portugal), the Hippodrome (London), Musica Nelle Valli (San Martino Spino, Italy), the Great American Music
Hall (San Francisco), the Frieze Arts Fair (London), Avalon (Los Angeles), and REDCAT (Los Angeles). She is a 2014
Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow, and has been awarded grants from the Cornell Council for the Arts and Cornell Atkinson
Center for Sustainability. In 2019, she contributed to the creation of Pattern Radio, Google Creative Lab's webtool for
teaching AI to recognize patterns in humpback whale song.
Lewandowski received her Master of Fine Arts in Music Performance and Literature with a Specialization in Improvisation
from Mills College. At Mills, she was awarded the Flora Boyd Piano Performance prize for her work on extended techniques
for the piano. She is a Senior Lecturer in Music at Cornell University.
"Annie may describe her music as 'eclectic-folk' but it’s always something more – sometimes beautiful, sometimes jarring,
but always transcendental."- BBC Radio 3's Late Junction, 2018