Louisville Orchestra's September 28 Concert Features Music Of Lawrence Dillon And Steven R. Gerber The Louisville Orchestra's ASCAP Award-winning New Dimensions Series will have its first performance of the season on Saturday, September 28, 2002 at 8:00 p.m. in Margaret Comstock Concert Hall at the University of Louisville School of Music, Louisville, Kentucky. Associate Conductor Robert Franz will lead a program including Lawrence Dillon's exciting and witty "Amadeus ex machina", and the American premiere of Steven R. Gerber's beautiful and moving "Symphony No. 1", along with music by Aaron Jay Kernis, and Daniel S. Godfrey. A pre-concert lecture by Composers-in-Residence Gerber and Godfrey will be held at 7:15 p.m. in Bird Hall. Recognized nationally for being at the forefront of new music, the Louisville Orchestra has recently been presented with its eighteenth ASCAP Award for the Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. For more information about the orchestra and its season, visit http://www.louisvilleorchestra.org. Tickets for this concert may be purchased via the web at http://www.louisvilleorchestra.org or through the Kentucky Center for the Arts Box Office at (502) 584-7777 or (800) 775-7777. Tickets are also available at any Ticketmaster outlet. Hailed by the Louisville Courier-Journal for his "compelling, innate soulfulness," Lawrence Dillon has produced an extensive body of work characterized by a keen sensitivity to color and a mastery of traditional forms. A student of Vincent Persichetti, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, and Roger Sessions, Dillon became at just short of 26 years of age, the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at the Juilliard School (1985), also winning the Gretchaninoff Prize and an ASCAP Young Composers Award. Currently Composer-in-Residence at the North Carolina School for the Arts, his works have been performed and broadcast throughout the Americas and Europe, and are available on Albany Records (information about his new CD - Chamber Music by Lawrence Dillon - http://www.jamesarts.com/releases/july02/LD_cd.htm), Channel Crossings, and CRS. Dillon's music is familiar to Louisville audiences; in 2001, his educational piece "Snegglish Dances" was premiered by the Louisville Orchestra on the Making Music Concert Series. Visit his website at http://www.lawrencedillon.com/. Steven R. Gerber's music has gained international attention as a result of two recent CD releases (on Chandos and KOCH) featuring several of his major orchestral works, including the "Symphony No. 1. Gerber has achieved also great success in the United States and in his ten tours of the former Soviet Union, perhaps becoming the most often-played living American composer in that area. Of the "Symphony No. 1", Evening Moscow declares, "Gerber could serve as an example of American musical professionalism ...he stands out with the highest of temperaments and musical taste." Mr. Gerber has written for a number of fine soloists including Yuri Bashmet for the viola concerto, Kurt Nikkanen for the violin concerto and Carter Brey for the cello concerto. His work has been performed by groups such as the Knoxville Chamber Orchestra, the Fine Arts Quartet, the National Chamber Orchestra and the Russian Philharmonic. Steven R. Gerber is the subject of a recent Electronic Dialogue interview in Sequenza 21 web magazine. Read the interview at http://www.sequenza21.com/index.html. Visit his website at http://www.stevengerber.com. Lawrence Dillon's "Amadeus ex machina" and Steven R. Gerber's "Dirge and Awakening" have both been selected as contemporary compositions for the 2002 Vakhtang Jordania Conducting Competition in Ukraine this September. Both Lawrence Dillon and Steve R. Gerber are represented by Jeffrey James Arts Consulting. For further information, contact them at 516-797-9166 or [log in to unmask] Jeffrey James <[log in to unmask]>