For as long as he can remember, Bryce Dessner has been strumming a guitar. He branched out from classical music as a teen to becoming a guitarist for the indie rock band The National. These days, he’s leaning into his classical background by composing. His debut album for Sony Classical is titled Solos.
"Over the years, I've written quite a few solo instrumental pieces for myself, mostly on the classical guitar. And eventually I started writing for friends," Dessner tells A Martínez from his home in Paris. He adds, "I'm lucky to have some really talented friends." Performers on the album include Katia Labèque, one half of the storied French piano duo with her sister Marielle; Dutch harpist Lavinia Meijer; Scottish percussionist Colin Currie and American violist Nadia Sirota.
"My background was quite classical," Dessner says, recalling how he played a lot of Bach and English Renaissance lute music as a young adult. "That was sort of in my language as I started to write for other people, string quartets, eventually orchestra and choir. Then soloists would ask me to write pieces for them," he says.
Dessner wrote the two cello works on the album for the young Russian Anastasia Kobekina. Song for Ainola was composed while sitting on a porch overlooking pristine Lake Tuusula near the home of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. A longer version, named after the lake, offers wild arpeggiated lines and riffs that sound closer to the rock music of Dessner’s band. That's the point. "It is definitely more rocking than anything I've ever done on an electric guitar," Dessner says.
He found himself at the Sibelius house after being invited to appear at the Tuusula Festival by Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. For him, Dessner composed Ornament and Crime, a suite of three pieces that reference a collection of essays by Adolf Loos, a pioneer of modern architecture.
Dessner finds many parallels in architecture. With classical music, "You need to design the whole building immediately," he explained in a Belgian interview. Every idea has to be thoroughly elaborated.
"You put up the cathedral and then you find where to open the windows,” he tells NPR. Adding that, "If you show up with a half finished score, you're going to have people tearing their hair out and screaming at you in rehearsal."
When Dessner composes, he’s usually thinking about someone else. "And often they're far better musicians than I am," he admits. "All the musicians on this record are exceptional soloists who have spent their lives perfecting their instrument."
The radio version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital version was edited by Tom Huizenga.
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