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. Partially deaf from birth, Dillon grew up in a bustling household with seven older siblings. He 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 North Carolina School of the Arts, where he has served as Music Director of the Contemporary Ensemble, Assistant Dean of Performance and Dean of the School of Music.

Dillon's music, in the words of American Record Guide, is "lovely...austere...vivid and impressive." His works are recorded by Albany Records, Channel Crossings and CRS, and published by American Composers Editions. He is represented by Jeffrey James Arts Consulting.


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Saturday, September 08, 2007
Composer Madness

One of the pieces I’ve just finished is Entrance, a work for narrator and chamber ensemble I had wanted to write for ten years. Yesterday I put the parts to Entrance into envelopes to mail off to the performers. Then I slipped the hard-copy originals into a folder to put into the massive file drawer that holds all of my works.

What did I find already filed under “E”? A piece called Entrance, from 1997. Here I thought I had just been thinking about the piece for ten years, when the truth was I WROTE THE PIECE TEN YEARS AGO. As with a number of my works, I filed it away and forgot it. All I remembered was writing the text and thinking I should get around to setting it to music someday.

The new version is much better than the old one. At least, that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.