Composer, Delian Society Founder Joseph Dillon Ford

By Molly Anderson | Posted 1/1/11 | Updated 6/24/25

Joseph Dillon Ford is the founder of The Delian Society. This organization for musicians — the first of its kind — allows composers on six continents the opportunity to collaborate and connect with others who share their interest in tonal music.

Q: What was your original impetus in creating The Delian Society?

A: The Delian Society was founded on the Web in January 2004 to provide an international vehicle for tonally oriented art musicians to connect and collaborate creatively with one another. It's the first organization of its kind, with members on six continents representing the breadth and diversity of contemporary tonal art music, from the very traditional to the adventurously emergent.

Q: Who are some of the composers you work with that inspire and challenge you to take your work to the next level?

David Warin Solomons A: We Delians are an extremely diverse group and continuously share our musical ideas and discoveries with one another. The composers and performers who inspire us reflect that diversity. Some of our members work with artists and ensembles living in or near our own communities, such as British composer David Solomons, one of our founding members, who has had his work performed by Tubalaté, the Camerata Quartet, and the Fell Quartet. Check out this YouTube performance of David's infectiously delightful "Tants Fraylachs."

We Delians also are known for collaborating on large-scale multi-movement projects, such as the Variations concertantes sur le nom de Paul Verlaine, premiered in Seattle by bassoon soloist Franck Leblois (Conservatoire Gabriel Fauré, Angoulême, France) and the Octava Chamber Orchestra.

Some of our members can point to specific composers who have served as major influences. Edward Gold (New York City), a graduate of Yale, recalls being impressed early on by Chopin and Brahms, but also holds Schoenberg and Picker in some regard. Like Charles Ives, he has given us a particularly memorable musical evocation of Central Park in an electronic version that reveals his skill in the art of digital sequencing.

I studied musicology at Harvard, so I've assimilated as many historical influences as I possibly can from a wide spectrum of traditions and refuse to get straitjacketed by any "signature" style. One day I might compose something polyphonic that looks back to the Renaissance, such as my setting of a text evoking the Gate of Hell from Dante's Inferno, sung by the dwsChorale.

The next day, I may take a completely different direction, as I did through the use of starkly quintal harmonies, sibilant effects, and a text with Buddhist undertones by Florida poet Henry Stevens.

Q: How does The Delian Society support and collaborates with artists that work in other media?

A: The Delians are very enthusiastic about multimedia projects, as the examples I've given demonstrate. We welcome talented artists interested in works that explore multiple sensory and cognitive modalities. Many Delians have placed their own musical videos on YouTube and other web sites, and some are professionally trained artists in other media such as painting, architecture, and literature. Roman Turovsky-Savchuk (New York City), whose musical style is deeply influenced by his Ukrainian heritage and the Baroque, is a gifted painter and lutenist who independently produced a darkly captivating vision of the modern urban landscape that concludes with a surprisingly tonal solo for vihuela da mano.

Some may have the mistaken impression that today's tonal composers are impeded by a "conservative" agenda, but it could just as easily be argued that the exclusion of tonality from new music is a tradition established in the past century with the potential to produce a stultifying level of artistic conformity. Besides, internal polling has consistently shown that Delians tend to be progressive to liberal in their politics and receptive to a wide range of stylistic possibilities, including the use of non-tonal resources.

Our virtual festivals have always been closely allied with the visual arts, and our web pages reflect this inter-arts orientation. Last year, the theme for our Ye New Music Fayre was "Dialogues with the Muses," to which California composer Nancy Bloomer Deussen, known internationally for her poetically evocative musical landscapes, contributed the richly imaginative "Pegasus" Suite.

Q: How did you first discover your passion for tonal music?

A: Each of our composers would probably give a different reply to that question. Speaking for myself, I grew up in a home with a mom who played "classical" music on our upright piano, so I got very early exposure to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and many other composers besides through her performances and through our family stereo system, TV, and radio. For Delian David Solomons, it was Mendelssohn's magnificent Octet that opened the door to the art of tonality. Edward Gold was trained as a concert pianist and grew up playing masterworks by many of the most prominent romantics, later recording for the Musical Heritage Society.

Q: Who were some of your early musical influences? How has that changed over the years?

A: In addition to the composers and circumstances mentioned already, I should put a word in for my exposure to art music in the public schools since the first grade through high school, during which time I was fortunate to have some very talented music teachers.

I'm deeply concerned about what I perceive to be the decline of music education that has come about in recent years, particularly as a consequence of budget cuts affecting all the arts and bureaucratic meddling with curricula and teaching. If "classical" music is threatened today, these are some of the chief causes endangering its survival. Not every citizen has to become a professional musician, but each should acquire at least a level of music literacy that makes it possible to understand and enjoy the great art music traditions from around the world.

Focusing on basic verbal and mathematical skills at the expense of the arts is a sure formula for mediocrity and cultural decay, since it undermines the cultivation of creative thinking and tends to produce shallow conformists content to consume the transient products of commercial popular culture — the intellectual equivalent of "fast food." If people are unable to engage meaningfully with the great creative minds of the past and use what they have to offer us in new ways, the future of societies around the world will be grievously, irreparably diminished.

Q: When you're not creating new music, what do you like to listen to? Are there any modern musicians you find particularly inspiring?

A: Again, each Delian would likely give a different answer. Personally, I don't recognize any fixed boundaries between past and present, which is completely in line with Einstein and other mainstream physicists who think of all times existing together in a sort of "block." I don't believe "now" is confined to any insular moment or can be encompassed by some notion of contemporaneity but is, rather, porously expansive, taking in all times and places. So I can enjoy listening to "ancient" Greek music as much as I do to a performance by the Kronos Quartet. I believe I speak for many Delians, whose tastes are similarly eclectic — but by no means elitist. "Popular" music can be and often is invigorating, and the best of it is composed for reasons other than purely commercial ones.

Q: What is your greatest challenge in working with all these disparate artists and musicians? Your greatest joy?

A: The greatest challenge for me as International Coordinator is coordinating everything internationally! Thanks to the opportunities opened up by the Internet, this isn't nearly as difficult a task as it might have been just twenty or so years ago. Of course there are still language barriers to overcome, and we need to ensure greater access to the Web for musicians in developing nations (particularly in Africa), but we have high hopes and expectations. The artistic results we've managed to achieve are, without a doubt, my greatest joy. In fact, it's simply amazing how a group of artists living in some cases thousands of miles apart on different continents in widely varying time zones can put together entire new works and programs in a spirit of mutual cooperation, all because of their uncommonly passionate love for interesting new tonal music.

Q: What words of wisdom would you like to impart to emerging musicians?

A: Don't cave in to the demands of a society that every day and in every way may compel you to relinquish your artistic calling. Unless you're independently wealthy or can muster the financial support of family or friends, the road ahead is likely to be extremely difficult to travel. But if you don't make the effort and undertake the journey, you'll never arrive anywhere that really matters to you and will never aspire to go on to explore new, as yet unimagined destinations. And do take heart, because you don't have to travel alone.

6/17/25 Update: The Delian Society group is active here.