"There are no two points so distant from one another that they cannot be connected by a single straight line -- and an infinite number of curves."
Composer Lawrence Dillon has produced an extensive body of work, from brief solo pieces to a full-length opera. Three disks of his music are due out in 2010 on the Bridge, Albany and Naxos labels. In the past year, he has had commissions from the Emerson String Quartet, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Mansfield Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, the Salt Lake City Symphony, the Ravinia Festival, the Daedalus String Quartet, the Kenan Institute for the Arts, the University of Utah and the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra.
Although he lost 50% of his hearing in a childhood illness, Dillon began composing as soon as he started piano lessons at the age of seven. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at The Juilliard School, and was shortly thereafter appointed to the Juilliard faculty. Dillon is now Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he has served as Music Director of the Contemporary Ensemble, Assistant Dean of Performance, and Interim Dean of the School of Music. He was the Featured American Composer in the February 2006 issue of Chamber Music magazine.
It’s been a busy, fun and exhausting week of concerts. In the past seven days, I’ve been involved, to one extent or another, in performances of music by Steve Reich, Patrick Long, Emma Lou Diemer, David del Tredici, David Gillingham, James Stewart, Dylan Zola, Joseph Edwards, Gregory Miles Hoffman and Felix Ventouras.
And this coming Saturday, the American premiere of my What Happened, a piano quartet I blogged about last spring when the Atlantic Ensemble premiered it in Paris. Now they are here, rehearsing. I’m looking forward to a great concert, which will be the end of our season here. Then I will be happy to spend a few more evenings at home for a change, instead of returning from rehearsal at all hours of the night.
