James Dillon (born 29 October 1950) is a Scottish composer who is often regarded as belonging to the New Complexity school. Dillon studied

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

, Indian rhythm,

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ap ...

, but is self-taught in

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

. Dillon was born in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

, Scotland. Honours include first prize in the

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (also known by the acronym HCMF, stylised since 2006 as the lowercase hcmf//) is a new music festival held annually in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. Since its foundation in 1978, it has featured ...

in 1978, the Kranichsteiner music prize at

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

in 1982, and five

Royal Philharmonic Society The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) is a British music society, formed in 1813. Its original purpose was to promote performances of instrumental music in London. Many composers and performers have taken part in its concerts. It is now a memb ...

composition awards, most recently for his chamber piece ''Tanz/Haus: triptych 2017''. Dillon taught at Darmstadt from 1982 to 1992, and has been a guest lecturer and composer at various institutions around the world. He taught at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

School of Music in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

, Minnesota, from 2007 to 2014.

Selected works

His major works include choral and vocal music, including the cycle ''L'évolution du vol'' (1993) and the opera ''Philomela'' (2004), the orchestral works ''helle Nacht'' (1987), ''ignis noster'' (1992), ''Via Sacra'' (2000), and ''La navette'' (2001), as well as a

violin concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...

for

Thomas Zehetmair Thomas Zehetmair (born 23 November 1961) is an Austrian violinist and conductor. Biography Zehetmair was born in Salzburg, and studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where both of his parents taught. His festival debut was at age 16. He was in mast ...

(2000) and the

piano concerto A piano concerto is a type of concerto, a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for a piano player, which is typically accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuoso showpiec ...

''Andromeda'' (2006) for his partner, Noriko Kawai, all showing an ease of writing for large forces. From 1982–2000, Dillon worked on the ''Nine Rivers'' cycle, a 3-hour work for voices, strings, percussion, live electronics and computer-generated tape. The epic work was first performed in full in Glasgow, November 2010. Andrew Clements of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' awarded it a full five stars, describing the last movement ("Oceanos") as having a "Wagnerian grandeur" and stating, "The cumulative power of 'Nine Rivers''is massive, the range of musical experience vast." His considerable body of

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

, often written expressly for a performer's individual abilities, includes solos for

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

drumkit A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player ( drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsti ...

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

piccolo The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

, and

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

, alongside eight

string quartet The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...

s (1983, 1991, 1998, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2017), the five-part ''Book of Elements'' for piano (1997–2002) and ''the soadie waste'' for piano and string quartet (2002/3). In 2013,

Tom Service Tom Service (born 8 March 1976) is a British writer, music journalist and television and radio presenter, who has written regularly for ''The Guardian'' since 1999 and presented on BBC Radio 3 since 2001. He is a regular presenter of The Proms f ...

referred to the ''Book of Elements'' as "the most significant contribution to the pianist's repertoire since

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" ...

's ''Études''". His fourth string quartet received the 2005

Music Award for Chamber-Scale Composition. He won the same award in 1997 (for ''Traumwerk, Book 1''), 2002 (for ''The Book of Elements 5''), and 2017 (for ''Tanz/Haus: triptych 2017''). His music has been published by

Edition Peters Edition Peters is a classical music publisher founded in Leipzig, Germany in 1800. History The company came into being on 1 December 1800 when the Viennese composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754–1812) and the local organist Ambrosius Kühnel ( ...

since 1982.

List of compositions

Source:

Orchestral

* ''Windows and Canopies'', small orchestra (20 players), 1985 * ''Überschreiten'', small orchestra (16 players), 1986 * ''Helle Nacht'', large orchestra (90 players), 1986–87 * ''Introitus – Nine Rivers 8'', 11/12 strings, fixed media, live electronics, 1989–90 * ''ignis noster'', large orchestra (100 players), 1991–92 * ''Blitzschlag'', flute, large orchestra (66 players), 1988–96 * ''Via Sacra'', large orchestra (80 players), 1999 * ''Concerto'', violin, large orchestra (79 players), 2000 * ''La Navette'', large orchestra, 2000–01 * ''Physis I & II'', large orchestra, 2004–05 * ''Andromeda'', piano, large orchestra (80 players), 2005–06 * ''torii'', small orchestra (17 players), 2009–10 * ''White Numbers'', large orchestra (77 players), 2011 * ''The Gates'', string quartet, large orchestra, 2016 * ''Circe (Pharmakeia : 3)'', small orchestra (16 players), 2017

Chamber music

* ''Crossing Over'', clarinet, 1978 * ''Ti.re-Ti.ke-Dha'', drum kit, 1979 * ''...Once upon a Time'', alto flute (+ piccolo), oboe (+ English horn), clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, trombone, double bass, 1980 * ''Parjanya-Vata'', cello, 1981 * ''East 11th St. NY 10003 – Nine Rivers 1'', 6 percussion, 1982 * String Quartet No. 1, 1983 * ''Zone (...de azul)'', clarinet, French horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello, piano, 1983 * ''Le Rivage'', flute (+ piccolo, alto flute), oboe, clarinet (+ bass clarinet), French horn, bassoon, 1984 * ''Sgothan'', flute, 1984 * ''Diffraction'', piccolo, 1984 * ''Shrouded Mirrors'', guitar, 1988 * ''Del Cuarto Elemento'', violin, 1988 * ''L'Écran parfum – Nine Rivers 2'', 6 violins, 3 percussion, 1988 * ''La Femme invisible – Nine Rivers 4'', flute (+ piccolo), alto flute (+ bass flute), oboe, English horn (+ oboe), clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 soprano saxophones (2nd + alto saxophone), piano, 3 percussion, 1989 * ''L'Œuvre au noir – Nine Rivers 6'', bass flute (+ alto flute, piccolo, triangle), bassoon (+ contrabassoon, crotales), tenor-bass trombone, bass trombone, harp (+ sleigh bells), 2 cellos (1st + rainstick, 2nd + crotales), double bass (+ sleigh bells), 2 percussion, live electronics, 1990 * ''éileadh sguaibe – Nine Rivers 7'', 2 French horns, 2 trumpets, tenor-bass trombone, bass trombone, tuba, 2 percussion, live electronics, 1990 * String Trio, violin, viola, cello, 1990–91 * ''nuée'', bass clarinet, 2 percussion ad libitum, 1991 (section of ''L'Évolution du vol''; may be performed separately) * String Quartet No. 2, 1991 * ''Siorram'', viola, 1992 * ''Lumen naturæ'', violin, viola, cello, 1992 * ''Vernal Showers'', violin, ensemble (flute piccolo, alto flute oboe, harp, guitar, mandolin, viola, cello, double bass, harpsichord, percussion), 1992 * ''L'Ascension'', 2 percussion, 1993 (section of ''L'Évolution du vol''; may be performed separately) * ''Le Vent, l'arbre et le temps'', double bass, 1993 (section of ''L'Évolution du vol''; may be performed separately) * ''Redemption'', clarinet, violin, piano, 1995 * ''Traumwerk, Book 1'', 2 violins, 1995–96 * ''Todesengel'', clarinet, vibraphone, 1996 * String Quartet No. 3, 1998 * ''Eos'', cello, 1999 * ''La Coupure – Nine Rivers 5'', percussion, live electronics, film, 1989–2000 * ''Two Studies'', accordion, 2001 * ''Traumwerk, Book 2'', violin, harpsichord, 2001 * ''Traumwerk, Book 3'', violin, piano, 2001–02 * ''The Soadie Waste'', piano, string quartet, 2002–03 * ''The Magic Stick'', piano, percussion, 2005 * String Quartet No. 4, 2005 * ''The Hesperides'', cello, piano, 2007 * ''Theatrum: figuræ'', oboe (+ English horn), clarinet (+ contrabass clarinet), bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, 2 percussion, 2007 * String Quartet No. 5, 2003–08 * ''The Leuven Triptych'', flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trombone, harp, guitar, cello, double bass, piano (+ synthesizer), percussion, live electronics, 2008–09 * String Quartet No. 6, 2010 * ''Oslo/Triptych'', flute (+ piccolo, bass flute, shortwave radio), clarinet (+ E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, shortwave radio), 2 violins, viola, cello, piano (+ harmonium/synthesizer), percussion (+ shortwave radio, voice transformer), 2011 * ''New York Triptych'', flute (+ piccolo, alto flute, bass flute), oboe (+ English horn), clarinet (+ E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet), violin, viola, cello, piano (+ electronic keyboard), percussion, shortwave radio, fixed media, 2011–12 * String Quartet No. 7, 2013 * ''Tanz/Haus: triptych 2017'', flute, clarinet, electric guitar, violin, cello, double bass, piano, accordion, percussion, 2017 * String Quartet No. 8, 2017 * String Quartet No. 9, 2018 * ''The Freiburg Diptych'', solo violin, tape and live electronics, 2019

Choral

* ''Viriditas – Nine Rivers 3'', 16 mixed voices, 1993–94 * ''Oceanos – Nine Rivers 9'', 16 mixed voices, orchestra, live electronics, 1985–96 * ''Hyades'', 12 mixed voices, 1998 * ''residue...'', 24 mixed voices, 1998–99 * ''Vapor'' (text by Titus Lucretius Carus), 4 mixed voices, string quartet, 1999 * ''Stabat Mater Dolorosa'', 12 mixed voices, 12 players, live electronics, 2014

Vocal

* ''Who do you love'', female voice, flute (+ piccolo, bass flute), clarinet, violin (+ viola), cello, percussion, 1980–81 * ''Evening Rain'', any voice, 1981 * ''Come live with me'' (text from the Song of Solomon), female voice, flute (+ piccolo, alto flute), oboe (+ oboe d'amore, English horn), piano, percussion, 1981–82 * ''A Roaring Flame'' (texts by Alexander Carmichael, Clara d'Anduza), female voice, double bass, 1981–82 * ''Time Lag Zero'' (text from the Song of Solomon), female voice, viola, 1982 * ''L'Évolution du vol'', female voice (+ hurdy-gurdy), E-flat clarinet (+ bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet), double bass, piano (+ harmonium), 2 percussion, 1991–93 (sections 2–7 of its eight sections may be performed separately: ''L'Homme et la vérité'', female voice, piano; ''L'Ascension''; ''L'Être-ange'', female voice hurdy-gurdy E-flat clarinet; ''Nuée''; ''Descente/désir'', female voice, bass clarinet, double bass; ''Le Vent, l'arbre et le temps'') * ''Temp’est'', female voice, flute, piccolo, oboe, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, bass trombone, percussion (2 players), piano, electric guitar, 2 violins, viola, cello, double bass, 1994 * ''Philomela'' (opera in five acts), solo soprano, solo mezzo soprano, solo bass-baritone, chamber ensemble, 2004 * ''Upon the cloudy night'', countertenor, piano, 2009 * ''The Louth Work: Orphic Fragments'', soprano, clarinet, viola, cello, piano, percussion, 2016

Piano

* ''Dillug-Kefitsah'', 1976 * ''Spleen'', 1980 * ''black/nebulae'', 2 pianos, 1995 * ''The Book of Elements 1'', 1997 * ''The Book of Elements 3'', 2000 * ''The Book of Elements 2'', 2001 * ''The Book of Elements 4'', 2002 * ''The Book of Elements 5'', 2002 * ''Charm'', 2009 * ''Dragonfly'', 2009 * ''Fujin'', 2011

Harpsichord

* ''Birl'', 1986

References

External links

Entry at The Living Composers Project
*
Art of the States: the soadie waste
world premiere performance of Dillon work {{DEFAULTSORT:Dillon, James 1950 births Living people 20th-century classical composers 20th-century British composers 20th-century British male musicians 20th-century Scottish musicians 21st-century classical composers 21st-century British composers 21st-century British male musicians British classical composers British male classical composers Scottish classical composers