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.

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.

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.