“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, with his band The National, and for his work in film music. He is regularly commissioned to write for the world’s leading ensembles, from Orchestre de Paris to London Philharmonic Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is in demand as composer in residence. Dessner is also a high-profile presence in film score composition, with credits including Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant with the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and 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.
The 2025/26 season includes composer residencies at Konzerthaus Berlin and with Czech Philharmonic; world premieres of his works at Carnegie Hall, Dublin’s National Concert Hall and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; plus the soundtrack release to new film Train Dreams (Netflix). Autumm 2025 also sees Dessner receive the Samuel Beckett Gold Medal from Trinity College Dublin, recognising his outstanding contribution to public discourse through the arts. Previous recipients include Joan Baez, Patti Smith and George Martin.
Then in January 2026 SO Percussion gives the world premiere of a co-commission by Carnegie Hall, SO percussion and Cal Performances. Dessner's new work sees the ensemble perform with the electric dulcimer-like ‘chord stick’ that he invented for them several years ago for Music for Wood and Strings, which has since been performed hundreds of times all over the world, including in Madrid, Amsterdam and Prague in autumn 2025. Meanwhile the world premiere of Bryce Dessner’s new work Love, Icebox - a conceptually staged programme with dramaturgy and electronics, based on excerpts of the letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham – takes place at Paris’ Fondation Louis Vuitton in December 2025. Actress Isabelle Huppert and pianist Alice Sara Ott star in this unique work, which incorporates methods from Cage’s own composing. Dessner’s creation is programmed in conjunction with the Fondation’s major retrospective of painter Gerhard Richter, upon whom John Cage was a significant influence.
Recent major new works include a Cello Concerto, Trembling Earth, premièred in November 2025 by Anastasia Kobekina and the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland, 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.
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.’”