In a national press conference, the Ravinia Festival of Highland Park, Illinois has announced the results of its first composer competition.

Lawrence Dillon, Composer in Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts, is one of three winners.

The competition called for composers to submit works for piano trio and narration inspired by the words of Abraham Lincoln, in honor of Lincoln’s bicentennial in 2009. Dillon’s composition, The Better Angels of Our Nature, uses excerpts from two letters and two speeches. “Abraham Lincoln is one of the most fascinating figures in political history,” says the composer. “The Better Angels of Our Nature focuses on three key aspects of his character: his integrity, his sense of humor, and his poetic vision.”

Dillon presents these three aspects of Lincoln’s character in three movements. The first movement, Integrity, uses a remarkable letter the future president wrote in 1836, chiding a friend for announcing publicly that he was in possession of facts that he would not divulge because they would destroy Lincoln’s prospects for re-election to the Illinois state legislature.

“It’s so inspiring to see a leader who has the self-confidence to value truth over loyalty,” says Dillon. “This letter demonstrates Lincoln’s honesty, one of the most appealing facets of his character.”

The second movement, Humor, uses an equally remarkable letter, one written by the young Lincoln on April Fools Day, 1838, to his friend Mrs. O. H. Browning. In it, he spins a fantastic and humorous yarn about his failed courtship attempts to a woman he found less than attractive.

Dillon set this text as a scherzo that is turned upside down halfway through.  “At first, it appears that Lincoln is having fun at the expense of the lady’s appearance,” Dillon says, “But then, halfway through, she turns the tables, and the joke is on him.”  Lincoln concludes the letter by saying, “Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never in truth be said of me.  I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself.” The composer has written more about these letters in his Sequenza 21 blog “An Infinite Number of Curves” at http://www.sequenza21.com/dillon.html.

The final movement, Vision, uses excerpts from two of Lincoln’s inspiring speeches to show the poetic side of Lincoln’s character.

“[Lincoln] is at once timely and timeless, so we want to celebrate his birthday by building on that timeline by letting today’s composers comment on our fluid understanding of this legendary man,” says Welz Kaufmann, the president and CEO of Ravinia, the oldest music festival in the United States. Visit them at http://www.ravinia.org/.

The other two winners of the Ravinia competition are James Crowley’s  From the Earth and Eric Sawyer’s Lincoln’s Two Americas.

All three composers will receive monetary awards, and all three works will be premiered by the Lincoln Trio, ensemble in residence at the Music Institute of Chicago. Performances will take place throughout the 2009 Lincoln bicentennial year. One of the three works will then be selected for an East Coast tour with Miriam Fried and musicians from Ravinia’s Steans Institute.

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 the age of 26 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, Dillon holds residencies at numerous summer festivals, and has been awarded grants from the American Music Center and National Endowment for the Arts, among others. His works have received special commendation from the 2003 Masterprize of London, been chosen for the 2002 Jordania International Conducting Competition in Kharkov, Ukraine and been performed and broadcast throughout the Americas and Europe. Read his latest Cadenza newsletter at http://www.jamesarts.com/releases/jan08/LD_nws_010208.htm. Visit his website at http://www.lawrencedillon.com/.

He is represented by Jeffrey James Arts Consulting - 516-586-3433 - to whom inquiries about his music can be directed.