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James Dillon

  • Advent Calendar

    James Dillon – Charm

    by 5:4 December 21, 2021 • 05:00
    December 21, 2021 • 05:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar door contains a miniature by James Dillon. Similar to Dragonfly, explored during this year’s Lent Series, Charm (2008) is another short piano work composed quickly for a friend. The title is interpretable in a variety of ways (in a pre-concert talk, Dillon even mentioned the charm quark…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 November 29, 2021 • 15:46
    November 29, 2021 • 15:46

    One of my recurring trains of thought during HCMF 2021 was concerned with the notion of continuity. This was, very simply, due to the fact that all of the best things i heard at the festival had an incredibly clear, logical sense running through them that, regardless of their inner…

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  • Lent Series

    James Dillon – Dragonfly

    by 5:4 February 21, 2021 • 05:00
    February 21, 2021 • 05:00

    The longest work i’ve ever written about on 5:4 is Scottish composer James Dillon‘s magnificent three-hour Nine Rivers cycle, which i explored almost a decade ago. So it’s rather nice that the next piece i’m exploring in this year’s Lent Series focusing on nature, also by James Dillon, is one…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Arditti Quartet + Jake Arditti

    by 5:4 November 26, 2018 • 13:13
    November 26, 2018 • 13:13

    My 2018 HCMF experience came to an end yesterday in what is now the traditional way, at 1pm in St Paul’s Hall in the company of the Arditti Quartet. Four years ago, they tackled the first seven quartets by James Dillon; on this occasion their concert included the next two…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Duo Gelland, Ensemble Mosaik

    by 5:4 November 18, 2018 • 15:04
    November 18, 2018 • 15:04

    Yesterday’s late evening concert at HCMF, given by Ensemble Mosaik in Bates Mill, presented the first UK performance of Enno Poppe‘s Rundfunk. There are ways in which the piece is remarkable, and ways in which it isn’t. What certainly is remarkable – and the more i’ve thought about this the…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    HCMF 2017: Red Note Ensemble, Metal Machine Music, Aeolian

    by 5:4 November 18, 2017 • 13:39
    November 18, 2017 • 13:39

    Here we go again (deep breath)… The opening concert of the 40th edition of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival immediately gave one pause for thought. What it wasn’t was a conventional wallop, a smack around the ears to wake us up out of our complacency, such as the one given…

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  • Miscellaneous

    HCMF revisited: James Dillon – Piano Concerto ‘Andromeda’

    by 5:4 November 14, 2017 • 13:28
    November 14, 2017 • 13:28

    Scottish composer James Dillon is a regular fixture at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the last few years have included several of his larger-scale works. Of these, the performance of his Piano Concerto ‘Andromeda’ at HCMF 2014 was one of the most striking, and has remained vividly in mind…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    St Peter’s Church, Drogheda: James Dillon – The Louth Work: Orphic Fragments (World Première)

    by 5:4 May 3, 2017 • 12:16
    May 3, 2017 • 12:16

    It shames me to admit that, until February this year, i’d never heard of Louth Contemporary Music Society. On the one hand, it’s ridiculous that i hadn’t: for the last seven-or-so years they’ve been putting on fascinating concerts featuring music by, among many others, Terry Riley, György Kurtág, John Zorn, David Lang,…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    A mass of miniature miracles: Alba New Music 2016

    by 5:4 October 12, 2016 • 11:01
    October 12, 2016 • 11:01

    A couple of miles out of the centre of Edinburgh, emblazoned in brightly-lit capital letters, is a stark, startling sentence: THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE. Created by Nathan Coley in 2009, and situated outside the Modern Two gallery, the unequivocal message of this bold piece of art rang entirely…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2014 revisited: James Dillon – Physis (World Première)

    by 5:4 February 15, 2015 • 14:04
    February 15, 2015 • 14:04

    To conclude my revisiting of HCMF 2014 for the time being, i have to feature something by the festival’s Composer-in-Residence, James Dillon. There’s much to choose from, but the single work that made the strongest impact on me was Physis, receiving its world première. i’ve said a little about the…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2014: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Arditti Quartet

    by 5:4 December 1, 2014 • 22:21
    December 1, 2014 • 22:21

    The closing weekend of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival was dominated by the music of composer-in-residence, James Dillon. Saturday found him represented by two major works performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Steven Schick, the piano concerto Andromeda and the first performance of Physis, a work originally…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2014: James Dillon, Simon Steen-Andersen

    by 5:4 November 24, 2014 • 17:14
    November 24, 2014 • 17:14

    Walking away from a concert feeling perplexed about what you’ve just heard is an understandable and inevitable experience at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Considering how many risks the festival makes, the diversity and juxtaposition of the programming, it’s pretty much unavoidable (“WTF” would make an ideal accompanying slogan should…

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    HCMF 2013: Séverine Ballon

    by 5:4 November 19, 2013 • 16:30
    November 19, 2013 • 16:30

    Today’s first concert was given by French cellist Séverine Ballon. Her recital comprised UK premières by Hèctor Parra and Mauro Lanza and a world première by Rebecca Saunders, together with a classic of the repertoire, James Dillon‘s Parjanya-Vata, composed in 1981. It was especially good to hear this again; it’s…

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    HCMF 2013: Red Note Ensemble

    by 5:4 November 16, 2013 • 19:06
    November 16, 2013 • 19:06

    This year’s pilgrimage to HCMF began, as it always seems to, at St Paul’s Hall, for a concert given this afternoon by Scotland’s Red Note Ensemble, directed by Garry Walker. They performed three works, something old(-ish), something new(-ish) and something entirely new. It was the entirely new piece, David Fennessy‘s…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    James Dillon – String Quartets No. 5 (World Première) and No. 6 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 26, 2013 • 17:08
    March 26, 2013 • 17:08

    Despite their official numbering, the last two string quartets written by Scotland’s most brilliantly inventive composer, James Dillon, were actually composed the opposite way round to how they appear. His String Quartet No. 5 was originally begun as a gift for the Arditti Quartet, to celebrate their 30th anniversary. However,…

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  • Premières

    James Dillon – Nine Rivers (World Première) – 9. Oceanos

    by 5:4 November 6, 2011 • 14:17
    November 6, 2011 • 14:17

    If I want a water of Europe, it is the black Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight A squatting child full of sadness releases A boat as fragile as a May butterfly. (translation by Wallace Fowlie) The penultimate stanza from Rimbaud’s La Bateau ivre, one of the inspirations behind…

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  • Premières

    James Dillon – Nine Rivers (World Première) – 8. Introitus

    by 5:4 November 5, 2011 • 11:31
    November 5, 2011 • 11:31

    As éileadh sguaibe reaches its conclusion, the electronics seem to catch hold of the percussion; however, a glance at the score of Nine Rivers‘ eighth piece, Introitus, reveals that it is, in fact, its own tape part overlapping the final minute of éileadh. Having been more-or-less dormant for the last…

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  • Premières

    James Dillon – Nine Rivers (World Première) – 7. éileadh sguaibe

    by 5:4 November 4, 2011 • 08:20
    November 4, 2011 • 08:20

    Having kept the electronics on a very tight leash in L’œuvre au noir, James Dillon reins them in almost completely in the seventh work of the Nine Rivers cycle, éileadh sguaibe. Like its predecessor, the work was also commissioned for the Paragon Ensemble, who gave the first performance in January…

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  • Premières

    James Dillon – Nine Rivers (World Première) – 6. L’œuvre au noir

    by 5:4 November 3, 2011 • 07:56
    November 3, 2011 • 07:56

    The third and final part of James Dillon’s Nine Rivers bears the subtitle ‘Melanosis’, another reference to alchemy, this time ‘blackening’. This is, in fact, the first of the three stages of the alchemical process; Dillon began with the middle stage (leukosis), followed by the final stage (iosis), so the…

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  • Premières

    James Dillon – Nine Rivers (World Première) – 5. La coupure

    by 5:4 November 2, 2011 • 08:32
    November 2, 2011 • 08:32

    To describe the fifth work in James Dillon’s Nine Rivers, La coupure, as being ‘pivotal’ perhaps seems like a truism; it sits, after all, at the epicentre of the cycle. Yet it marks a timbral transition that will be felt on all the remaining pieces, namely the inclusion of electronics.…

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