“Dessner [..] moves fluidly between rock and classical and everywhere in between.” - Guardian
Bryce Dessner is a vital and rare force in new music. He has won Grammy Awards as a classical composer and with the band The National, of which he is founding member, guitarist, arranger, and co-principal songwriter. He is regularly commissioned to write for the world’s leading ensembles, from Orchestre de Paris to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is a high-profile presence in film score composition, with upcoming films including Sing Sing starring Colman Domingo, and John Crowley’s We Live in Time starring Andrew Garfield. Over the years he has garnered great acclaim for his work on films such as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant with the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and for his music to Netflix’s Fernando Meirelles’s The Two Popes.
Dessner collaborates with some of today’s most creative and respected artists, including Steve Reich, who named Dessner “a major voice of his generation.” Dessner’s orchestrations can be heard on the latest albums of Paul Simon, Bon Iver and Taylor Swift.
Recent major new works include a Piano Concerto premièred by Alice Sara Ott and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in January 2024 and now being performed internationally; a Concerto for Two Pianos premièred by Katia & Marielle Labèque and the London Philharmonic Orchestra; and a Violin Concerto premièred and performed internationally by Pekka Kuusisto.
During the 2024/25 season Bryce Dessner will be Artist in Residence at the National Concert Hall, Dublin and Ars Music Festival at BOZAR, Brussels. In addition to being the creative chair of the Tonhalle Zurich last season, his many past residencies include being one of eight San Francisco Symphony Collaborative Partners, Artist-in-Residence at London’s Southbank Centre and with Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.
In August 2024, Bryce Dessner released Solos (Sony Classical) which showcases his collection of solo instrument pieces in collaboration with some of the world’s leading musicians including Katia Labèque, Anastasia Kobekina, Pekka Kuusisto, Nadia Sirota, Colin Currie and Lavinia Meijer.
““—you can hear a furiously complicated musical mind chattering. Dessner’s sensibility as a composer is furtive, urgent, intense.”
“But Dessner’s mordant vision is uniquely his; these are real, meaty works, troubling and beautiful.””
“....the New York Philharmonic gave the New York premiere of a double piano concerto by a pop artist with classical and indie rock credentials. With the composer in attendance, the piece, lovingly crafted to show off the evening’s soloists, Katia and Marielle Labèque, had a strong claim as the evening’s centerpiece.’”
“His harmony is familiarly tonal, but he relishes dissonance and tension, and dances with a visceral rhythmic playfulness. He seems to enjoy turning harmonies upside down, and bouncing them around, examining how they reflect light.’”