Bryce Dessner

Bryce David Dessner (born April 23, 1976) is an American composer and guitarist based in Paris, best known as a member of the Grammy Award-nominated band The National. Dessner has also made a name for himself as an acclaimed 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, BAM Next Wave Festival, Barbican Centre, Edinburgh International Festival, Sydney Festival, eighth blackbird, Sō Percussion, New York City Ballet, and many others. His work Murder Ballades featured on eighth blackbird's album Filament, an album he also produced and performs on, won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. Bryce has worked with some of the world's most creative and respected musicians and visual artists, including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Jonny Greenwood, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Justin Peck, Ragnar Kjartansson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Marcel Dzama and Matthew Ritchie, among others. Dessner is also the founder of the MusicNOW Festival, a founding member of the improvisatory instrumental group Clogs and co-founder of Brassland Records. He has a master's degree in music from Yale University. 2Composer Dessner's compositions draw on elements from Baroque and folk music, late Romanticism and modernism, as well as minimalism. His unique and individual voice as a composer has earned him a number of high-profile commissions. Recent commissions include 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 will be released by New Amsterdam Records in March 2017; Music For Wood and Strings with Sō Percussion, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in November 2013; and Murder Ballades a work inspired by American folk music and written for the multiple Grammy-winning new-music ensemble eighth blackbir