Lawrence Dillon@Sequenza21.com

"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.


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Sunday, July 30, 2006
The Me I Never Knew

Lots of roadwork in the next couple of weeks: tomorrow I head back to the Outer Banks for the conclusion of our summer arts festival. We’ll have multimedia performances by the Open Dream Ensemble, a few evenings of dance with live percussion music by Xenakis and Chavez, and even a silent film festival with improvised accompaniment.

Then on August 4 I head to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos. More about that when I return on August 9.

This afternoon I’m hosting a birthday party for a one-year-old, with guests ranging in age from 10 to 29 months. Then at 5:00 I’ll be sitting in the owner’s box at a Durham Bulls game, listening to a friend play the national anthem on solo trombone.

Sometimes I feel like I’m eating from a plate that is six times the size of my head.

The composing is going at high speed: I’ve completed the second draft of the first two movements of my symphony. The third and last movement is sketched, but I’m going to wait until I get the first two almost finished before going any further on the third. I’m also working on a woodwind quintet, a solo violin piece and a quartet I’ve mentioned before for soprano, horn, guitar and narrator. A lot to finish by Labor Day, but you never get anywhere if you don’t aim high.

In the meantime, I’ve found my doppelganger: Scotland’s Laurence Dillon, aka the Fabulous Nobody.