"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.
Been away from blogging for two weeks, my longest hiatus in two years – and it’s been refreshing. I still have tons to say, and some new developments to report on, but I’m enjoying a little quiet, reflective breather right now, staying away from the computer for days at a time. Composers have to be good listeners, but sometimes one needs to shut oneself away, to turn the outside world down to a distant babble.
Composing itself has shifted into a very smooth gear – I wouldn’t say I’m coasting, but the ideas are flowing beautifully.
Or I should rather say that knowing what to do with the ideas is flowing beautifully. Ideas are never hard to come by. The real challenge is finding just the right way to combine, complement, develop, balance, begin, conclude, vary, emphasize, etc. your ideas so that they really come to life. All of those things require an intense level of concentration, putting yourself in the moment of performance, in the moment of listening.
So that’s what I’ve been doing: not speaking, not listening -- so I can better hear.
