Bryce Dessner

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 credits including The Revenant, for which he was Grammy and Golden Globe nominated, Fernando Mereilles’s The Two Popes, which won Discovery of the Year at the World Soundtrack awards, Mike Mill’s C’mon C’mon and Bardo, by Alejandro González Iñárritu and She Came to Me, by Rebecca Miller.

Dessner collaborates with some of today’s most creative and respected artists, including Philip Glass, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Paul Simon, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Sufjan Stevens, Jonny Greenwood, Bon Iver, Nico Muhly, and Steve Reich. His orchestrations can be heard on the latest albums of Paul Simon, Bon Iver and Taylor Swift.

Dessner is one of San Francisco Symphony Collaborative Partners and is currently Artist-in-Residence at London’s Southbank Centre and with Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. His recent major works include Concerto for Two Pianos for Katia and Marielle Labèque, premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon; Violin Concerto premiered by Pekka Kuusisto and commissioned by partners including Orchestre de Paris, Philharmonia Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. Dessner scored the music—involving full orchestra and a 200-member choir—for the Louis Vuitton catwalk show in March 2020 as part of Paris Fashion Week. Spring 2024 will see international premieres - including with Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, of his new Piano Concerto, featuring Alice Sara Ott as soloist.

Recordings include St. Carolyn by the Sea on DG; Aheym, commissioned by Kronos Quartet; Tenebre performed by Ensemble Resonanz (2019) and which won an Opus Klassik award; When we are inhuman by Dessner, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Eighth Blackbird (2019) and Impermanence (2021) with Australian String Quartet.

Also active as a curator, Dessner is regularly requested to program festivals and residencies around the world, at venues such as at the Barbican, Philharmonie de Paris, and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. He co-founded and curates the festivals MusicNOW in Cincinnati, HAVEN in Copenhagen, Sounds from a Safe Harbour and PEOPLE.

www.brycedessner.com