Bryce Dessner (North American composer and guitarist)

Bryce David Dessner (born April 23, 1976) is an American composer and guitarist based in Paris and a member of the rock band the National. Dessner's twin brother, Aaron, is also a member of the group. Together, they write the music in collaboration with lead singer and lyricist Matt Berninger. In addition to his work with the National, Dessner is known for his work as an independent composer. His orchestral, chamber, and vocal compositions have been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, ensemble intercontemporain, Metropolitan Museum of Art (for the New York Philharmonic), Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, BAM Next Wave Festival, Barbican Centre, Edinburgh International Festival, Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival (Cork, Ireland), Sydney Festival, eighth blackbird, Sō Percussion, New York City Ballet, and many others. His work, Murder Ballades, was featured on eighth Blackbird's album Filament, an album he also produced and performed on, which won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Dessner has collaborated with artists such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Jonny Greenwood, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Terry Riley, Justin Peck, Ragnar Kjartansson, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Nick Cave, and Taylor Swift, among others. Dessner is the founder of the MusicNOW Festival, co-founder of Copenhagen's HAVEN festival, and co-curator of the festival Sounds from a Safe Harbour. He is a founding member of the improvisatory instrumental group Clogs and co-founder of Brassland Records. In 2018, Dessner was named one of eight creative and artistic partners for the San Francisco Symphony as part of incoming Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen's new leadership model for the orchestra in 2020. He has a bachelor's degree and master's degree in music from Yale University. Dessner, along with his twin brother Aaron, was named the 243rd greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023. Dessner was an Artist-In-Residence for the 2024-2025 season at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.   In 2026, Dessner earned his first Academy Award nomination for his work on the film Train Dreams. Dessner grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his twin brother, Aaron Dessner. Dessner was raised as Jewish and has Polish Jewish and Russian Jewish ancestry. Dessner attended high school at Cincinnati Country Day School and graduated in 1994. Dessner's compositions draw on elements from baroque and folk music, late Romanticism, and modernism, as well as minimalism. He composed the cello ensemble for Fondation Louis Vuitton and Gautier Capuçon's Classe d'Excellence, which premiered in June 2019. Concerto for Two Pianos, written for Katia and Marielle Labèque, premiered with London Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2018. Other compositions include: Voy a Dormir (2018), written for mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor and the Orchestra of St. Luke's and commissioned by Carnegie Hall; Skrik Trio, commissioned by Steve Reich and Carnegie Hall for the Three Generations Series and premiered by Pekka Kuusisto, Nadia Sirota and Nicolas Altstaedt in April 2017 at Carnegie Hall; No Tomorrow (a ballet by Ragnar Kjartansson, Margrét Bjarnadóttir and Bryce Dessner), which premiered as part of the Sacrifice Festival, April 2017 and was the winner of Iceland's Griman Award; The soundtrack for Death of Marsha P. Johnson, the Netflix documentary about the LGBT rights activist (2017); Wires, commissioned for the legendary Ensemble Intercontemporain, and premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris with and Matthias Pintscher in 2016; The Most Incredible Thing written for the New York City Ballet, choreographed by Justin Peck with costumes by Marcel Dzama, which premiered February 2016 at Lincoln Center; Quilting for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which premiered in May 2015 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and was performed by the LA Phil, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel; Wave Movements, an orchestral work co-composed with Richard Reed Parry and featuring visuals by the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, which premiered at the Barbican Concert Hall in London in the spring of 2015; 40 Canons for the Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet, which premiered at the Barbican Concert Hall in London in the spring of 2014; Reponse Lutoslawski for the National Audiovisual Institute of Poland, which was premiered by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Warsaw in fall 2014; Black Mountain Songs for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 2014 and was released by New Amsterdam Records in March 2017; Music For Wood and Strings with Sō Percussion, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in November 2013; His work, Murder Ballades, was inspired by American folk music and written for the multiple Grammy-winning new-music ensemble eighth blackbird. The group premiered the piece in Eindhoven in April 2013 and featured it on their 2015 album "Filament." In addition to his work being featured on "Filament," Dessner produced the album which won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance in 2016. Justin Peck's dance with the same name, created for the L.A. Dance Project, also features Murder Ballades as its soundtrack. In September 2013, Lyon, France, hosted the ballet's world debut. The song was performed by eighth blackbird in October 2014 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as live music accompaniment for a show by the L.A. Dance Project. In addition, important past compositions by Dessner include three string quartets for Kronos Quartet (Aheym, Tenebre and Little Blue Something); Tour Eiffel for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus; O Shut Your Eyes Against the Wind for Bang on a Can All Stars; Lachrimae for the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Scottish Ensemble, and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra; St. Carolyn by the Sea for the American Composers Orchestra and Muziekcentrum Eindhoven; and El Chan for piano quartet or piano duo, and which is widely toured by Katia and Marielle Labèque. His evening-length oratorio Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) includes libretto by Korde Arrington Tuttle and poems by Patti Smith and Essex Hemphill, featuring vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, soprano Alicia Hall Moran, tenor Isaiah Thomas and dancer/choreographer Martell Ruffin, and combining 16th-century madrigals, blues and post-modern musical influences. Produced by ArKtype and directed by Kaneza Schaal, the work was created in partnership with The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. It explored the work of the photographer through the lens of its African-American subjects via Tuttle's deeply personal view of the contradictions and inherent racism within the artist's adoration and deification of the Black body, often eluding its humanism. It premiered as a concert version conducted by Sara Jobin with co-commissioner LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall in Los Angeles on March 5, 2019, followed by the full theatrical world premiere with co-commissioner and lead producing partner University Musical Society at the Power Center of Ann Arbor, on March 14, 2019. Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) was Dessner's first major theatrical work, and among the only rights granted for use of Mapplethorpe's images in performance. The ballet, Frame of Mind, choreographed by Sydney Dance Company's Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela and featuring Dessner's string quartet compositions Aheym and Tenebre, has been toured all over the world and has won several Helpmann Awards. In January 2012, Dessner signed to Chester Novello Publishing for his concert music. The first recordings of Dessner's compositions, performed by the Kronos Quartet, were released in 2013 by Anti-Records. The album, "Aheym," features four of Dessner's compositions: Tenebre, Little Blue Something, Tour Eiffel, and Aheym. On March 4, 2014, Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Classics released "St Carolyn By the Sea; Suite from There Will Be Blood." Performed by the Copenhagen