An opera exploring the frisson of the radical politics and aesthetics behind the emergence of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians would be trenchant at any time. Launched by visionary pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams in the spring of 1965, the organization became a fulcrum and forum for some the era’s most adventurous artists, including Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, and Jack DeJohnette.

Trombonist, composer, installation artist, computer music pioneer and scholar George Lewis joined the AACM at the age of 19 in 1971, and the Cal Performances presentation of his Afterword, an opera on Friday at Zellerbach Playhouse as part of Ojai at Berkeley festival feels particularly timely. Last week word came that Mills College is set to eliminate the position of reed explorer Roscoe Mitchell, who founded the epochal Art Ensemble of Chicago with fellow AACM members Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Famoudou Don Moye, and Malachi Favors in the mid-60s.

“It was a genius hire, and would be a boneheaded separation,” says Lewis, the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. He holds deep affection for Mills, where he’s taught intermittently over the past 30 years and met his wife, koto master Miya Masaoka. A letter writing campaign spearheaded by former and present students of Mitchell’s speaks to his pervasive influence and his essential role in maintaining the college’s vaunted reputation as a hotbed of musical experimentation.

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