A native of Tennessee, Lawrence Campbell holds degrees from Northwestern University, where he graduated magna cum laude, and from Indiana University, where he was awarded the Doctor of Music degree in performance with highest distinction.  Pianists with whom he has studied include Pauline Manchester Lindsey, Gyorgy Sebok, and Alfonso Montecino.  Other major influences have been Maestro Carlo Zecchi in summer classes at the "Mozarteum" (Salzberg, Austria), and Sir Clifford Curzon for whom he played during several months of study in London, England.

Lawrence Campbell won the 1968 Chicago Young Artists' Competition sponsored by the Society of American Musicians (the organization which also sponsored his Chicago debut the following year).  Northwestern University honored him with the Corrine Frada Pick Prize for excellence in performance, the Pi Kappa Lambda scholarship, and the Wade Fetzer Prize as most outstanding performer in his graduating class.  He was selected to play in master classes with Victor Babin (1967) and Easley Blackwood (1971) and with the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra.

Lawrence Campbell has performed extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.  As a performer he professes marked affinity for the works of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and Liszt.  In 1986, the centenary of Liszt's death, he presented over thirty recitals devoted exclusively to the music of that composer.  In that year he was featured artist at recitals of the Beethoven Society (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale), and at conventions of the Missouri Music Teachers' Association, and the Wisconsin Music Teachers' Association. During the current season (1997) he is playing recitals featuring the music of Franz Schubert to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of that composer's birth.

Before joining the Illinois Wesleyan University faculty in 1978, Lawrence Campbell taught at Bemidji (Minnesota) State University, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, and Albion College.  In recent years he has become increasingly involved with teaching related activities, serving frequently as an adjudicator, guest clinician, and lecture-recitalist.  He has judged concerto competitions for young artists sponsored by the Chicago Symphony (Sudler Awards) and by the Des Moines Symphony, divisional and state competitions of the Music Teachers' National Association, auditions of the Artist Presentation Society (St. Louis), and other competitions sponsored by universities and civic orchestras.  He has conducted master classes at various state conventions of the Music Teachers' National Association and on numerous university campuses in conjunction with recital appearances.