"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.
The Prism Saxophone Quartet is preparing an upcoming concert of quartets for baritone sax – that’s right, all four players playing the big uncle of the family. Problem: bari saxes require their own plane tickets, so how do the musicians, who live in four different places, afford to get together to rehearse? Answer: they all came here, where we have four baris – two owned by Taimur Sullivan, our sax teacher, and two lent by our students. Prism snuck in here for three days, so our kids got to listen in on rehearsals of one of the more adventurous and successful ensembles in the biz.
And it only took three plane tickets to get them together.
On another note, the Emerson Quartet residency last week was a great success. Two very intense concerts – the encore for the first concert was the fourth of Webern’s Five Pieces – to a packed house, with rock-star lines afterwards for getting CDs autographed.
