Lawrence Dutton

About Lawrence

Lawrence Dutton, violist of the 9-time Grammy winning Emerson String Quartet, has collaborated with many of the world’s great performing artists, including Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oscar Shumsky, Leon Fleisher, Sir Paul McCartney, Renee Fleming, Sir James Galway, Andre Previn, Menahem Pressler, Walter Trampler, Rudolf Firkusny, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Lynn Harrell, Evgeny Kissin, Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Dichter, Jan DeGaetani, Edgar Meyer, and Joshua Bell among others.

Mr. Dutton has also performed as guest artist with numerous string quartets such as the Juilliard, Guarneri, Pacifica, Escher and the Quartetto Di Cremona. In addition he has also performed as guest artist with several piano trios including the Beaux Arts, Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson and Eroica. Since 2001,  Mr. Dutton has been the Artistic Director of the Hoch Chamber Music Series, presenting three concerts at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY. He has been featured on three albums with the Grammy winning jazz bassist John Patitucci on the Concord Jazz label and with the Beaux Arts Trio 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.

Mr. Dutton has appeared as soloist with many American and European orchestras including those of Germany, Belgium, New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, and Virginia, among others. In addition to the Heifetz Instiute, he has appeared as guest artist at the music festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe, Ravinia, La Jolla, the Great Mountains Festival in Korea, Chamber Music Northwest, the Rome Chamber Music Festival and the Great Lakes Festival. With the late Isaac Stern he had collaborated in the International Chamber Music Encounters both at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem.  Currently Mr. Dutton is Distinguished Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Stony Brook University in New York and Distinguished Artist at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. He began violin studies with Margaret Pardee and on viola with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School. Mr. Dutton earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees at the Juilliard School, where he studied 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. He and the other members of the Emerson Quartet were presented the 2015 Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award from Chamber Music America and were recipients of the Avery Fisher Award in 2004. They were also inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2010 and were Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year for 2000.

Mr. Dutton exclusively uses Thomastik Spirocore strings and his Viola is a Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, NY 2003).