Inf inite CurvesInfinite Curves 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

January 2012

recent premieres Appendage with Lauren Flanigan

Sparkling in the Dark Terranean Meditation

GPS Lady Shadow on the Sun

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orci elit, ultrices ut, vestibulum

id, ullamcorper vel, massa.

Pellentesque ac sem. Sed

risus justo, scelerisque ut,

ultrices a, auctor et, lacus.

Duis a orci.

the newsletter of

Lawrence Dil lonLawrence Dil lon

Jeffrey James Arts Consulting

new recordings Bridge: Insects and Paper Airplanes

Naxos: Violin Music of Lawrence Dillon

other news upcoming performances

Dillon on the web new publications

2 January 2012

GRAMOPHONE

“Highly recommended”

Bridge Records

Insects and Paper Airplanes Brio

“Sly and Mysterious,” exclaimed Gramophone in its feature (below) on Insects and Paper Airplanes, the new Bridge release of Lawrence Dillon’s chamber music. “Just when you thought the string quartet may have reached the edge of sonic possibilities, along comes a composer who makes something novel, haunting and whimsical of the genre….….Highly recommended.”

Featuring the Daedalus String Quartet and pianist Benjamin Hochman Insects and Paper Airplanes, has been piling up accolades for the past year since its release. “I have listened to this recording more often than any other this month, and I am not yet full,” marveled American Record Guide. “[It] nearly bursts with freshness and invention, all the more exciting for the exemplary performances by the Daedalus Quartet and Benjamin Hochman, who obviously love these works. The engineering is also exemplary

and brings out all the character of the strings, from the glacial and smooth to the gritty and raw. NPR gave the recording “three gold stars for content, performance and sound. It features rewarding chamber music by American composer Lawrence Dillon…that has both emotional and intellectual dimensions.” “Lawrence Dillon gets my vote for a recording that offers a second helping of representative music,” offered Audiophile Audition. “What about it, Bridge? “ And Fanfare chimed in, “Putting this CD into my player, I was quickly convinced that I was listening to music that is well constructed, inventive, and unfailingly interesting….lots of fun….original in the best sense of the word.”

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon

3 January 2012

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon

Naxos Records

Violin Music of Lawrence Dillon Brio

Another new release that’s been garnering plenty of positive attention is a recording of Dillon’s violin music featuring Sphinx Competition Grand Prize Winner Danielle Belén on Naxos American Classics. Here is MusicWeb International’s response:

…an hour of music that is often profound without being pretentious, sometimes light-hearted but never 'lite', humorous without being arch, and immensely appealing but never frivolous. According to Naxos's usual formula, {American composer} always = {American Classics}, but sometimes there is more than a touch of prescience about such fundamentally commercial choices.”

And Whole-Note Magazine said, “[Belén’s] playing is terrific from the outset, with a full, warm tone and a daunting technique. There isn’t a single moment on the entire CD when you don’t feel that she is in complete control, both technically and musically.”

The Naxos release is the first recording of seven compositions spanning twenty-five years: Bacchus Chaconne, Façade, Fifteen Minutes, Mister Blister, Sonata: Motion, Spring Passing, and The Voice. Belén is joined on this disk by pianist David Fung, marimbist Stan Muncy and violist Juan-Miguel Hernandez. Of the sonata, the most substantial work on the program, Byzantium exclaimed: “from beginning to end this is a fine, impassioned, attractive work, played alternately with great vigour and delicacy by both Belén and Australian pianist David Fung, one that deserves a place in the violin sonata repertoire.”

“…varied and quite

dazzling”

WholeNote Magazine

4 January 2012

“A terrific and theatrically

exciting work”

Fanfare Magazine

Appendage

with Le Train Bleu at Galapagos

Lauren Flanigan gave the first NYC performance of Dillon’s Appendage at Brooklyn’s Galapagos Art Space on June 17th with Le Train Bleu, the new music ensemble

conducted by Ransom Wilson. The program also included music by Martin Bresnick, John Halle and Randall Woolf, in a program the blog As a Cynic Sees It called “one of the great concerts of my life.”

Flanigan recorded Appendage for the Albany label, the release of which prompted Raymond Tuttle of Fanfare Magazine to exclaim:

The obsessive frustration of incompleteness is rendered wryly amusing, moving, and nightmarish in Appendage, which is both a tour de force for the composer and for the performers, soprano Flanigan in particular. This is a terrific work. In fact, it is so good it made me weep. And Dillon, with his vivid imagination and his ear for vocal and instrumental color, seems to be a terrific composer.

Ransom Wilson conducting Appendage with Le Train Bleu

Named by TIME Magazine as "the thinking man's diva" and awarded by ASCAP and the Center for Contemporary Opera for her commitment to performing the works of living composers, soprano Lauren Flanigan has firmly established herself as a unique musical presence in the world today. She has performed at many of the world’s leading opera houses including La Scala, Teatro San Carlo, Bayerische Staatsoper, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera.

Le Train Bleu is a new ensemble formed by conductor and flutist Ransom Wilson. The musicians are among the most exciting young players in New York, and are chosen for their brilliance as well as their expressive qualities. Recently named a resident ensemble of the Galapagos Art Space, the ensemble continues plans to present performances of new and interesting music.

More about Appendage here

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon

5 January 2012

Forecast Music premieres

Sparkling in the Dark

- The Gathering Note

Forecast Music, established in Brooklyn in 2001, relocated to North Carolina last year. To celebrate the move, Forecast performed a program of regional composers at The Garage, an artist hangout in Winston-Salem. The performance included the premiere of Sparkling in the Dark, Dillon’s first electroacoustic work. The performers were saxophonist Taimur Sullivan and bassoonist Saxton Rose.

Rose and Sullivan repeated their performance the following week at the UNC School of the Arts in a concert that also included works by Sofia Gubaidulina and Jacob Ter Veldhuis.

Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia premieres

Terranean Meditation at the Wintergreen Summer Arts Festival

Taimur Sullivan and Saxton Rose warm up in The Garage

Set in the striking vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Wintergreen Summer Arts Festival is six weeks of wall-to-wall performances. Lawrence Dillon served as Composer in Residence for Wintergreen in July, where the guest ensemble Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia premiered his Terranean Meditation. The first performance took place on Thomas Jefferson’s property in Monticello, the second occurred at the Wintergreen Resort in Virginia.

The Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia is planning further performances of Terranean Meditation in Italy in 2012.

Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia poses with the composer after the premiere of

Terranean Meditation

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon

6 January 2012

Lost in rural California in the middle of the night in the summer of 2010, Dillon began working on a piece called GPS Lady for clarinet and piano. A year later, GPS Lady was premiered by Christopher Bush and Carol Minor at the Summerland Music series in Hudson Falls, NY. Look for more performances in 2012.

GPS Lady at Summerland Music Society

Shadow on the Sun project for ARTStem

ARTStem, a project of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, connects artists with scientists to pursue creative parallels between varied disciplines. In March, an ARTStem collaboration between Lawrence Dillon and solar physicist Eric Carlson resulted in the premiere of Shadow on the Sun, a composition for wind ensemble that explores phenomena and paradoxes in solar studies.

On March 4th, Dillon and Carlson were joined by conductor Michael Dodds in a symposium that traced

the connections between scientific inquiry and artistic exploration. The accompanying photo shows Dillon discussing the factors that went into the creation of his composition. The following evening, Dodds conducted the UNCSA Wind ensemble in the premiere, accompanied by images taken through the Hubble Space Telescope.

Other 2011 performances

Brio

• February: Chinese premiere of Devotion at Shi Chien University.

• April: Pasadena performance of Sonata: Motion.

• April-August: Naxos release events in California and New York featuring violinist Danielle Belén.

• July: Furies and Muses performed at Wintergreen.

• July-September: performances of String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere in Connecticut, California and Maryland by the Daedalus String Quartet.

• September: Mister Blister performed in Florida.

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon

“…the audience loved Haydn’s wonderful Joke quartet, but it got even better: most of us had not heard Lawrence Dillon’s Infinite Sphere (his String

Quartet No. 4, commissioned by the Daedalus) and were completely dazzled by the brilliant writing and virtuosic performance. ”

Russian River Chamber Music

7 January 2012

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon

Upcoming performances – spring 2012

Brio

• January 21: Low and Lower premieres Poke for speaking cello and double bass at the UNCSA School of Music.

• January 22: Carolina Chamber Symphony Players perform the woodwind quintet Child’s Play in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

• January 28: Low and Lower performs Poke for speaking cello and double bass at the Kenai Performing Arts Society in Soldotna, Alaska.

• January 29: Low and Lower performs Poke for speaking cello and double bass in Anchorage, Alaska.

• February 5: Low and Lower performs Poke for speaking cello and double bass at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

• February 5: Premiere of Multiplicity for six violins in Los Angeles, California featuring violinist Danielle Belén and students at the Colburn School of Music.

• February 14: Post-Haste Duo performs Sparkling in the Dark at the Jubilus Festival in Gainesville, Florida.

• February 25: European premiere of Terranean Meditation in Campobasso, Italy by the Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia.

• February 26: Performance of Multiplicity for six violins at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles, California featuring violinist Danielle Belén and students at the Colburn School of Music.

• February 26: Performance of Terranean Meditation in Sulmona, Italy by the Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia.

• April 12: Daedalus String Quartet performs String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere for Chamber Music Corvallis in Oregon.

• May 6: Atlantic Chamber Ensemble performs What Happened on tour in France, a piece they premiered in Paris in 2005.

• May 19: Mansfield Symphony performs Figments and Fragments, Part One of the Schumann Trilogy, which they co-commissioned.

Dillon on the Web Several new videos featuring Lawrence Dillon’s music are

online. Here are some samples:

Exit, featuring Robert Beseda, with (l. to r.) Paul Sharpe, Adele O’Dwyer, Robert Rocco, Taimur Sullivan and Judith Saxton.

String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere, performed by the Daedalus String Quartet

String Quartet No. 5: Through the Night, performed by the Emerson String Quartet

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon

Dillon on the Web

Several videos of Dillon’s music were posted online in 2011. Click on these samples:

9 January 2012

New Publications American Composers Editions published six new

works by Lawrence Dillon in 2011: Shadow on the Sun (6:00) – wind ensemble.

Terranean Meditation (12:00) – saxophone quartet..

Sparkling in the Dark (6:00) – soprano sax, bassoon and electronics.

Multiplicity (7:00) – six violins.

Poke (6:30) – cello, bass.

Seven Stories (17:30) – actor, 2 flutes, vibe, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello.

To obtain copies of these pieces, visit Dillon’s page (http://composers.com/lawrence-dillon) on the American Composers Alliance website,

phone (212) 925-0458,

email sales@composers.com or write to:

American Composers Editions 802 W. 190th St. Suite 1B

New York, NY 10040

For more about Lawrence Dillon, including a biography, list of works, news, discography, etc. visit his website at http://www.lawrencedillon.com/.

To order recordings, visit http://www.lawrencedillon.com/recordings.php

Read Dillon’s Sequenza21 blog at http://www.sequenza21.com/dillon/

You can also contact Jeffrey James Arts Consulting for more information at 516-586-3433 or jamesarts@att.net.

Jeffrey James Arts Consulting 45 Grant Ave.

Farmingdale, NY 11735

Infinite Curves – Lawrence Dillon