Biography
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Born
29 October 1950 (age 74)
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Born In
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Dillon, James (b. October 29, 1950, Glasgow, Scotland). Esteemed British composer of mostly orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, and piano works that have been performed throughout the world.
Mr. Dillon is self-taught as a composer. He had early experiences with traditional bagpipe music and in the late 1960s, he played with his band Influx. He studied art and design at the Glasgow School of Art in 1968, linguistics at the University College of London in 1970 and piano with Eleanor Purse in 1970-71. Later, he studied acoustics at the University of North London in 1971, Indian rhythm with Punita Gupta in 1971-72 and mathematics with Gordon Millar at the Tavistock Institute in London in 1972 and attended computer music seminars at IRCAM in 1984-85.
He has earned many honors, including First Prize in the competition of the Huddersfield Festival (1978) and the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at Darmstadt (1982) and he was named Classical Musician of the Year by the Sunday Times in London (1989). More recent awards include a fellowship from the Japan Foundation (1996) and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize (1998, for Traumwerk, Book 1), as well as the prize International Distinguished Fellow from New York University (2001) and numerous commissions from the European City of Culture. His music has been heard at major festivals throughout the world, including the Huddersfield (1983, 1996), the Musica in Strasbourg (1990, 2002) and the Tage für Neue Musik in Zürich (2001-02). In addition, retrospectives of his work have been given in Paris (1985), Oslo (1989), Toulouse (1991), Brussels (1992), and New York (2001).
Mr. Dillon taught at Darmstadt from 1982-92, directed the composition faculty at the Gothenburg Summer Academy in 1991 and served as co-composer-in-residence with Brian Ferneyhough at Royaumont in 1996. He taught as a guest composer at Goldsmiths College at the University of London in 1989-90 and 1991-92 and at the University of Central England in Birmingham in 1993-94 and 1995-96. He has guest-lectured in Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA, including at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 2003.
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