"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.
Summer is over, artistically if not seasonally, so it’s a good time to assess where I’ve been and where I’m going next. I can’t really kick myself over what I’ve accomplished these last few months, although I’ve had more productive summers. This one saw the completion of my second symphony, some good work on my fourth string quartet and two new six-minute chamber pieces.
To celebrate, I spent Labor Day weekend filling a major gap in the song literature: for some reason, it’s hard to find comical lullabyes. I’ve written six of them in the last three days, culminating in an epic work entitled The Diaper Fairy.
And now fall is here. I have a few projects in mind.
