"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.
I’ve long been intrigued by the behavioral differences between patriarchal and matrilineal societies. In a patriarchal society, the person in charge is typically a leader, the one who ventures out into unknown territory, exhorting everyone else to follow. In a matrilineal society, the person in charge is most often the one at the center, the one who is directly connected to everybody else.
In the new music world, the patriarchal model is held up for praise more often – we tend to honor composers who break new ground and dismiss composers who emphasize communication and centricity.
My ideal new music society would be called parentilineal, I suppose – it would value both leadership and centrality equally. I like to think that having a stable center and an adventurous periphery is the healthiest combination.
