Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet, has collaborated with many of the world’s great performing artists, including Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oscar Shumsky, Leon Fleisher, Walter Trampler, Menahem Pressler, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Dichter, Jan DeGaetani, Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell and Emanuel Ax, 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.

He has been featured on two albums with the Grammy winning jazz bassist John Patitucci and tours regularly with cellist Ralph Kirshbaum and violinist Robert McDuffie. 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 1992 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. He recently appeared at the Great Mountains Festival in Korea.

Currently Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at the Manhattan School of Music and Stony Brook University, Lawrence Dutton began violin and viola studies with Margaret Pardee and continued with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School, when he began playing viola exclusively. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lillian Fuchs. He has received an Honorary Doctorate from Middlebury College in Vermont and the College of Wooster, Ohio and, as a member of the Emerson String Quartet, was a winner of the 2004 Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Dutton uses Thomastik Spirocore strings. Lawrence Dutton lives in Bronxville, NY with his wife violinist Elizabeth Lim-Dutton and their three sons, Luke, Jesse and Sam.