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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Friday, April 29, 2005
Pruning continued

In Pruning the List (April 21), I suggested Glass’s Einstein on the Beach as the composition that had the most widespread, immediate influence on American music in the 1970s. Nobody has suggested an alternative, so EOTB gets the nod by negative acclamation.

Now to the 1980s. With this post, the original list gets knocked off of this page and into the archives, so you can access it here if you want to refresh your memory. I’m looking for suggestions as to which work from the 1980s had the most powerful impact on American composers of the time, the piece that made the most composers reconsider what was possible. Not necessarily the best piece, but the piece that, through a combination of inspiration, prominence and luck had the most widespread, immediate influence.

My vote goes to John Adams Harmonielehre. Runners-up (in chronological order) are Glass Satyagraha, Gubaidulina Offetorium, Anderson O Superman, Reich Tehillim, Reich The Desert Music and Andriessen De Stijl.

What do you think?