Friday night, members of the Beo String Quartet will perform Saturn Dreams of Mercury, a brief trio from 2012, at the Charlotte New Music Festival. It’s one of a set of responses I composed to Italo Calvino’s final work, Six Memos for the Next Millenium, in which he sets out his artistic principles. In the chapter on his second principle – quickness – he describes himself as a “Saturn who dreams … [Read more...]
Archives for 2015
Being the Sea
Baby boomers inherited a world that believed deeply in the value of the Western canon, and now inhabit a world that holds that canon responsible for many of our culture’s ills. One belief for childhood, the opposite for adulthood. Artists can create based on their beliefs. They can work within the assumptions laid out by the standards of the past in the belief that they are participating in … [Read more...]
Honey
Pianist Yael Manor has released a wonderful new disk of solo music that includes a piece of mine she premiered last winter at the Tenri Cultural Center in NYC. The disk is called Elixir, and it’s available everywhere stuff like that is available. Tomorrow night (Tues, June 9) she is performing a recital at Beethoven Pianos in NY featuring works on the recording: Lawrence Dillon Honey Frederick … [Read more...]
Multiplicity
Never been to Hot Springs, Arkansas, but I have a good excuse to go tomorrow night: the Hot Springs Music Festival is performing Multiplicity, a piece for six violins I wrote a few summers ago. Unfortunately, I can’t be there. Multiplicity was written for my longtime collaborator Danielle Belén to perform with five of her students at the Colburn School of Music. They premiered it in 2012; … [Read more...]
Undistorted
When I was a child, I had[1] a cassette player[2] of a type that would be immediately familiar to anyone over thirty, and possibly outside of the experience of anyone under 20. A flattish rectangular prism about half the size of a shoebox, it had a neat row of buttons that required some effort to depress: REC, REW, FF, PLAY, STOP, EJECT. For reasons I never questioned, the REC button would not … [Read more...]
spain tour
I am over here this week: http://uncsaspaintour.uncsa.edu/ … [Read more...]
Sleeping with Strangers
A little down time after exploring beautiful Barcelona. Chance for me to vent on a pair of mild peeves with international travel. First: why do people feel the need to rush on board the plane the moment their seating zones are called? You will have nine hours or so to get intimate with your seat, a seat that will have no respect for you in the morning: as far as I’m concerned, the longer it … [Read more...]
día a día
I’m off to Spain tomorrow with the Giannini Quartet, back in a week. At some point I should thank whoever is funding this trip, but I’m unclear who that is right now, so I will wait until I know what I am talking about. In the meantime, here is the itinerary – 4 cities, 4 concerts, 2 classes: MONDAY 18 MAY Composition master class at Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in … [Read more...]
Coming Down for Air
I’ve been in rehearsals with the Giannini String Quartet this past week preparing for their Spain tour, where they will be playing my String Quartet No. 3: Air (2004). Air is an eleven-minute homage to Italian aria, our fragile atmosphere, and our lifelong reliance on the peaceful undulation of our lungs. There is a wonderful recording of it by the Daedalus String Quartet online in all the usual … [Read more...]
Uncompromising positions
When composers stick to an artistic vision despite outside pressures to conform, we call them uncompromising. In this usage, uncompromising is a term of respect — even if we don’t particularly like what the composer is doing, we admire that level of determination and focus. There is a tradition of praising Americans for their uncompromising values. But there is also a strong tradition … [Read more...]