James Dillon has signed to James Joslin Music Management for commissioning and promotion.
Having previously worked with Dillon whilst I was Promotion Manager at Edition Peters, during that time we developed substantial commissions together including Tanz/haus and EMBLEMATA: Carnival for Red Note Ensemble, The Freiburg Diptych for Irvine Arditti, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and ECLAT Stuttgart, and Pharmakeia, commissioned by London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Intercontemporain.
Dillon’s catalogue of works includes Nine Rivers, an epic three-and-a-half hour sequence of works composed over more than two decades. First performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and Les Percussions de Strasbourg in 2010, it has subsequently been heard in New York and at the Holland Festival to great acclaim. Nine Rivers was conceived as a collection of works with 'internal symmetries' and is indicative of Dillon’s tendency to think in terms of large-scale cycles.
The recording of his chamber opera, Philomela, won the Grand Prix de l’Académie du Disque Lyrique 2010. The work, based on the Ovidian myth of Philomela, Procne, and Tereus, premiered in Porto in 2004, with further performances in Strasbourg, Paris and Budapest.
Recent works include Polyptych: Mnemosyne... (Acts of Memory and Mourning), for large ensemble, which was commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporarin to open Pierre Bleuse's first season as music director in 2023. Divided into parts which reflect and intersect each other, the work is in inspired by Renaissance ideas of imagination as a form of memory and altar pieces known as polyptychs (or theatres of memory) with their multiple folds and reflections.
Major upcoming works include a commission for Klangforum Wien's 40th anniversary in 2025.