Martin Dillon (musician)

Martin Dillon (b. Portsmouth, OH, June 17, 1957; d. Randolph, VT, August 21, 2005) was a musician, operatic tenor, and professor of music at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ.

Mr. Dillon was born Martin Dillow in West Portsmouth, Ohio. He began singing in a Baptist church choir with his parents, who owned a local restaurant. In high school, his sister said, he traveled to Europe with the Ohio Youth Choir and came back with the urge to sing opera.

With a big, expansive lyric tenor voice, he passed stringent auditions to study at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and he earned a master's degree at the University of Oklahoma.

Although he sang often with smaller opera companies in the United States and Europe, and in New Jersey oratorio performances, Mr. Dillon was considered a "character tenor," said conductor Eve Queler.

Mr. Dillon sang 11 concert operas, many of them in Carnegie Hall, with Eve Queler's Opera Orchestra of New York.

"Sometimes you want somebody with intense characterization in the voice, and that's what he had, and he was a wonderful musician, an excellent linguist," Queler said.

Queler cast Mr. Dillon in roles with major opera stars like Olga Borodina and Renée Fleming.

Martin Dillon, lyric tenor, has performed solo concerts throughout the world. His concert repertoire includes the major French and German song cycles. Mr. Dillon has performed over 40 operatic roles and countless recitals in the US, Europe and Asia and maintains a busy recital schedule throughout the globe. His most recent concert tour of Turkey was funded by the United States Embassy and The Fulbright-Hayes Foundation.

For his recital work, Mr. Dillon has received many international reviews: “In his German debut, Mr. Dillon presented himself as a world-class performer” (Munich’s “Süddeutsche Zeitung”) and “Kahn’s lush lyrical melodies are excellently suited to Martin Dillon’s lyric and flexible voice” ("Neue Musik Zeitung" Berlin)

As an international performer and an American cultural ambassador, he has been invited by the US government and embassies of the Caribbean, European and Asian countries to perform at their American Associations. He returned to Adana, Ankara and Istanbul December 14, 2004-January 1, 2005 to perform solo concerts and spent a week conducting Opera Master Classes for vocal students from the Curkurova Conservatories in Adana/ Mersin and the Istanbul Conservatory of Music.

More recently, Mr. Dillon earned notice for his two CDs of Robert Kahn's music; a third was about to be recorded.

For the first disc, when his accompanist backed out, Mr. Dillon blithely sat down and recorded the songs while accompanying himself on piano, a tremendously difficult musical feat.

On August 15-20, 2005 he joined the Vermont Chamber Music Festival to perform vocals in the chamber work of Robert Kahn’s “Jungbrunnen” song cycle This concert was broadcast on the Public Broadcast Station. For more information see: (www.centralvtchambermusicfest.org )

In addition to his sister, Mr. Dillon is survived by his parents, Sid and Bunny Dillow, and two brothers, Steve and Mick Dillow. All five live in West Portsmouth, OH.