Lawrence Dutton

Professor; Viola and Chamber Music
Ensemble-in-Residence; Emerson String Quartet

Lawrence Dutton was violist of the 9-time Grammy award winning Emerson String Quartet with a discography of more than 50 albums. He 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, Barbara Hannigan, 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. He has also performed as guest artist with numerous string quartets such as the Juilliard, Guarneri, Pacifica, Escher, Calidore, Modigliani, Talich, Amernet 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 concerts in Bronxville, NY and Greenwich, CT. He has also 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 De Gaetani 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. He has also appeared as guest artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the music festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, La Jolla, the Heifetz Institute, 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 bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lillian Fuchs. 

He and the other members of the Emerson Quartet have received Honorary Doctorates from Middlebury College in Vermont, The College of Wooster in Ohio, Bard College in New York, The Hartt School of Music in Connecticut and most recently in 2024, from the Juilliard School in New York. In 2023 Mr. Dutton and the other members of the Emerson Quartet were presented the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. 

In addition, they received in 2015 the 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 hisviola is made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, NY 2025).