"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.
Heard from Judith Sherman, who took part in the historic Carnegie Hall performance of Terry Riley’s In C last Friday night. Judy is, as anyone knows who is familiar with these things, one of the top recording producers in the Classical arena, with a particular expertise in new music. Ten Grammy nominations, with Top Classical Producer wins in 1993 and 2007 etc., etc. Here’s her report:
A mountaintop experience. I hadn't sung in public since 1978, so it took some time to get flexibility back into the voice, etc. But my, what fun!
She went on to tell me that Mark Stewart, who was playing home-made instruments in the performance, was suffering from shingles. “By the end of the evening, the pain was gone and hasn’t really come back – some itch, but not much pain. So In C cures shingles.”
So you heard it here: drop your anti-viral drugs, gather your friends, get a pulse going and start wailing away on your modules.
