Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Lawrence Dillon creates works that connect past and present in attractive and unexpected ways. Dillon’s music is recorded on the Bridge, Naxos, Albany, CRS and Channel Crossings labels and published by American Composers Editions. Although he has written in many genres, his chamber music and his text-based works have met with the greatest acclaim. Of the former, Gramophone wrote, “Just when you thought the string quartet may have reached the edge of sonic possibilities, along comes a composer who makes something novel, whimsical and haunting of the genre.” The Emerson Quartet took his String Quartet No. 5: Through the Night on tour throughout the US and Europe; likewise, the Daedalus Quartet performed his String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere from New England to California.
Dillon’s text-based works have run the gamut from brief compositions blending spoken text with instrumental accompaniment to complex song cycles. Of his Albany release Appendage and Other Stories, featuring sung and spoken text, Fanfare Magazine wrote “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.”