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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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Group shot

We had the PRISM Quartet here for a residency a couple months back, and I got so side-tracked by ensuing events, I never wrote about how wonderful they were. Never mind the brutally beautiful concert they played, featuring Albright, Sciarrino, Engebretson and Bresnick – what really got me was the amazing job they did with our student pieces. Normally, when we bring guest groups in to record student pieces, they give us their all for about 3-4 hours. PRISM requested two different sessions – an open rehearsal on Friday night, and a recording session on Sunday. They wanted a chance to talk with the students about their works, a day to let the music settle in, then an intensive let-it-all-hang-out time with the mikes. The composers got a lot out of it, and the results were really wonderful.





From left to right: Taimur Sullivan, Jesse Blair, Alicia Santee, Matthew Levy, Kenneth Frazelle, Zachary Shemon, Michael Ahrens, Lucas Hausrath, Tom Brennan, Leo Hurley, Timothy McAllister. photo by me.