Bryce Dessner

BRYCE DESSNER

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. 

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 saw 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.

Dessner is Konzerthaus Berlin’s 2025-26 composer-in-residence, beginning in September with performances of his Piano Concerto by Alice Sara Ott - for whom Dessner wrote his concerto - and Joana Malwitz conducting the Konzerthausorchester. Throughout the year the residency will dive into Dessner’s catalogue with performances of his other concertos and a special ‘Bryce Dessner and Friends’ concert. Meanwhile Dessner’s composer residency with Czech Philharmonic begins in January 2026 with him performing his work St. Carolyn by the Sea with Jakub Hrusa conducting. The first of several world premieres takes place in November 2025, of Dessner’s Cello Concerto, Trembling Earth, with Anastasia Kobekina, National Symphony Orchestra Ireland and Andre de Ridder at Dublin’s National Concert Hall, where Dessner was last season artist-in-residence. The work is co-commissioned by NCH Dublin, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust for the Philharmonia Orchestra.

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.

Dessner’s notable presence in the world of film music continues  with the release of the anticipated film, Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley, which received advance rave reviews (e.g. The Times, 5*) upon premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The score, which includes the title song Dessner co-wrote with Nick Cave, was released in November 2025 to coincide  film's worldwide premiere on Netflix. 

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. Dessner’s recordings also include two recent commissions Into the Forest and Into the Light for Gautier Capucon's 2025 Gaia album ; El Chan; St. Carolyn by the Sea (both on Deutsche Grammophon); Aheym, commissioned by Kronos Quartet; Tenebre, an album of his works for string orchestra recorded by Germany’s Ensemble Resonanz and which won a 2019 Opus Klassik award and a Diapason d’Or; When we are inhuman with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Eighth Blackbird (2019) and Impermanence (2021) with Australian String Quartet and which won the Libera award.

Also active as a curator, Dessner is regularly requested to programme festivals and residencies around the world at venues such as at the Barbican, Philharmonie de Paris, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich, where during the 2023-24 season he was Creative Chair. Dessner co-curates the Irish festival, Sounds from a Safe Harbour.

Bryce Dessner lives in France.