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.


Visit Lawrence Dillon's Web Site

Blogs I Like

Friday, August 18, 2006
Done

My second symphony is finished.

But don’t ask me to show it to you.

At this point, it is finished in a mess of pencil scribblings and notation files. If an opportunity for a performance comes about, I will pull them together into a completed score in a matter of a few days.

If the opportunity never arises, then they will remain unintelligible to anyone but their perpetrator. Which is how it should be.

Progress in this profession requires a lot of luck, but you also have to be ready to be lucky. Any success I’ve had has been a result of putting in the prep time, getting the material together before it was needed. The trick is in investing everything you have in your work, without leaving yourself vulnerable to disappointment. A narrow line to walk, but walking that line is the only way I know to stay sane and productive.

So, the symphony may be as done as it will ever be. I won’t harbor any further hopes – there are too many other pieces to write.