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, November 14, 2008
Edgy enough

I lived the first eighteen years of my life in New Jersey. Then I lived in Connecticut for four years, followed by six years in New York.

At the age of 28, I moved to North Carolina. I felt like I had moved to a foreign country. I wanted edgy, and all I saw was warm and fuzzy. After living in Brooklyn, Winston-Salem seemed impossibly tame.

After I had been here for a few months, I went to a post-concert reception at a friend’s apartment. I was doing my best to fit in, sipping the wine and taking little stabs at conversation.

I happened to glance out the window for a moment – then I did a major double-take.

Across the street, in a second-story window, there was a naked man with a hacksaw, patiently sawing the limbs off of a dozen-or-so mannequins.

“Hmm,” I thought, returning to the party. “I may have underestimated this place.”