With Fernweh: The Need to Travel, pianist and composer Richard Dillon invites listeners on a journey through landscapes both real and imagined. Spanning compositions written between 2017 and 2025, the album reflects Dillon’s lifelong fascination with movement, memory, and place, each piece a postcard from a different moment in time.
From the intimate tenderness of “Breakfast with My Best Friend” to the sweeping romanticism of “Camelot” and the haunting stillness of “- 20”, Dillon captures emotion through melody with painterly precision. The music evokes a traveler’s sense of wonder: fleeting scenes of friendship, loss, nature, and nostalgia rendered through shimmering piano textures and expressive phrasing.
Though rooted in the New Age / Neo-Impressionist tradition, Fernweh is deeply cinematic: its sound world unfolds like a film score for an inner voyage. The album’s narrative flows effortlessly from light to shadow, from the innocence of “Chasing Butterflies” to the meditative depth of “Echoes of a Broken Heart” and the reflective grace of “Mother’s Eyes.”
Richard Dillon is a composer-pianist whose music draws on the evocative power of memory, place and quiet introspection. With a formal background that includes an AA, BA and Master of Music in piano and composition, he has woven a multi-faceted career: as a performer in USO tours across the Pacific, a music educator, and—more recently—a recording artist whose solo-piano works have reached an international audience.
Growing up with Asperger’s and ADHD, Dillon found solace and expression in the piano. What began as lessons in childhood evolved into a lifelong journey of sound and storytelling. Reflecting his self-described “Neo-Impressionist” aesthetic, his compositions capture everything from the wistful longing of travel to the ambient hush of a winter’s night.
Based in Seattle, Dillon’s catalogue spans over a decade of releases on streaming platforms, including works featured on Pandora and Spotify. His music invites listeners into a landscape both intimate and expansive —a place where melody becomes memory and silence becomes texture.
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