Viola
Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet, winner of nine Grammy Awards, has collaborated with many of the world’s great performing artists, including Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oscar Shumsky, Leon Fleisher, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir James Galway, Sir Andre Previn, Walter Trampler, Menahem Pressler, Rudolf Firkusny, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Dichter, Jan DeGaetani, Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell, Emanuel Ax and Elmar Oliveira, among others. He has also performed as guest artist with numerous chamber music ensembles such as the Juilliard and Guarneri Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Since 2001, Mr. Dutton has been the Artistic Advisor of the Hoch Chamber Music Series at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY. He has been featured on three albums with the Grammy winning jazz bassist John Patitucci and with the Beaux Arts Trio he recorded the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, Op. 57, and the Fauré G minor Piano Quartet, Op. 45, on the Philips label. His Aspen Music Festival recording with Jan DeGaetani for Bridge records was nominated for a Grammy award. For BRAVO television he recorded works by Stravinsky and Hindemith. Mr. Dutton has appeared as soloist with many American and European orchestras including those of Germany, Belgium, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, and Virginia, among others. He has also appeared as guest artist at the music festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe, Ravinia, La Jolla and Chamber Music Northwest, and has collaborated with the late Isaac Stern in the International Chamber Music Encounters both at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. From 2008-2010 he performed at the Great Mountains Music Festival in Korea. Currently Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Stony Brook University, the Manhattan School of Music, and Mercer University in Georgia, Mr. Dutton began studies on violin with Margaret Pardee at Juilliard Pre-College and then continued on viola with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School of Music. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees at the Juilliard School, where he studied viola with Lillian Fuchs and has received Honorary Doctorates from Middlebury College in Vermont, The College of Wooster in Ohio, Bard College in New York and The Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. As a member of the Emerson String Quartet, he was a winner of the 2004 Avery Fisher Prize and was inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2010. Mr. Dutton exclusively uses Thomastik Spirocore strings and performs on a viola made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, 2003).
He resides in Bronxville, NY with his wife violinist Elizabeth Lim-Dutton and their three sons Luke, Jesse and Samuel.