‘The Beatles weren’t worried about what was allowed’

If some rock stars wear their heart on their sleeve, Bryce Dessner isn’t one of them. Speaking on a video call from his home in rural southern France, he comes across as quietly inscrutable, dressed simply in a grey T-shirt and cap. Behind him are a few more clues: five guitars ranging from electric to classical instruments on which he used to play Bach. A further 55 guitars are tucked away in storage.

Together, they tell the story of a life shaped, as Dessner puts it, by a to-and-fro between musical genres. “For a lot of artists, once they find something that works for them, they latch on to it and just keep on doing it,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve found my thing yet.”

As a rock and folk musician, Dessner is best known as a member of The National, an indie-rock band with a strong emphasis on brooding vocals and harmonic sophistication. In the classical world, he has written for ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic and scored numerous films including this year’s Oscar-nominated American prison drama Sing Sing. He is one of a rare few to have won Grammy awards in both classical and rock categories. Today, he gently nudges the conversation towards his ventures in the classical world.

Bryce and Aaron Dessner from The National perform their multi-media work The Long Count in Amsterdam, 2011 © Retna/Photoshot

Nowadays a lot of oxygen is spent on labelling things, which can feel like a cat chasing its own tail

This September brings the launch of a year-long residency with the Konzerthaus Berlin. In the first of three programmes showcasing Dessner’s orchestral works, the pianist Alice Sara Ott will perform Dessner’s Piano Concerto (2024), which, according to the composer, is his “most personal work yet”. He wrote it “as a love letter” to his ballet dancer sister Jessica, in response to her struggles with cancer. Consequently, he tells me, there is a lyricism to it, as well as a focus on dance rhythms inspired by his sister “There’s something disarming about it. I’m really letting my guard down.” 

But behind the sweetness there is also a distinctly filmic quality as well as a sense of exuberance, driven by persistent rock rhythms. At times you might wonder if this piece even counts as classical music — not that this bothers Dessner in the slightest. “Nowadays a lot of oxygen is spent on labelling things,” he says, “which can feel like a cat chasing its own tail.”

That disregard for traditional musical boundaries infuses all of Dessner’s work. In his 2011 concerto St Carolyn by the Sea, he weaves the sound of two electric guitars into an orchestral texture. In his film score for Sing Sing, he draws on elements of folk, medieval music, romanticism and minimalism to reflect the characters’ dreams of rehabilitation through theatre. Other pieces, such as his John Dowland-inspired Lachrimae for string orchestra, unite a classical composer’s grasp of instrumental colour with a rock musician’s instinct for generating instant hooks. The results are atmospheric, propelled by a headbanging sense of energy.

Would he describe his music as crossover? Dessner looks a little uncomfortable: “I think that would be reductive.” Far from being a rock musician who is trying on classical music for size, Dessner comes from a classical music background. In a world where the word “crossover” can be associated with a drop in quality, that distinction makes a difference.

In his home studio in the south of France, photographed by Bego Anton for the FT

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1976 to a musical family (his father was a jazz drummer), Dessner and his twin brother Aaron were raised on an eclectic musical diet: “We would dig up dad’s records: Miles Davis, Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Mozart.” His sister danced with the Cincinnati Ballet, and many of Dessner’s earliest encounters with classical music came from watching her perform. He learnt the flute, switching to classical guitar in his teens. Opportunities for group music-making, however, were few and far between: “It was the Reagan years in a very conservative city . . . We were bored, frankly. Kids were taking drugs and playing video games.” 

His solution was to form a band with Aaron, which sparked a new passion for composition. “We didn’t really have anybody around to show us what to do, so we just sort of made stuff up. There was a sense of freedom in that,” Dessner recalls. He went on to study composition and guitar at Yale. But it was only after moving to New York — where he joined The National, the band his brother had co-founded — that Dessner truly found his musical home. “In New York [musical genres] mixed together in a way that made everything feel possible; it felt like its own ecosystem,” he says, describing how at one club, he might find himself rubbing shoulders with artists ranging from the contemporary composer La Monte Young to David Bowie.

A byproduct of this was meeting — and beginning to work with — minimalist composer Steve Reich, who was looking for an electric guitarist with a background in classical music for a composition called 2×5. Since then, Dessner has collaborated with many others, including Philip Glass, Jonny Greenwood, Paul Simon and Taylor Swift, composing orchestrations for the singer’s eighth studio album, Folklore.

Bryce Dessner with Taylor Swift at the Grammy Awards in 2023 © Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

I love throwing myself into the deep end and finding new ways of expression. That’s why I keep changing genre all the time

Bryce Dessner

These partnerships have shaped his own style — particularly Reich and Glass, whose minimalist repetitions echo clearly in Dessner’s own Concerto for Two Pianos. Their influence also helps to explain how Dessner became adept in so many musical genres — a kind of musical multilingualism reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein, who wrote fluently for ballet, theatre, film, orchestra, opera and chamber ensembles. Does it feel jarring to move between such different soundworlds? Dessner insists that whether as a rock, folk or classical musician, “I don’t change who I am.”

He goes on to explain that the “physicality” of his folk and rock music influences his classical work, while the “harmonic and rhythmic complexity” of his classical compositions informs his rock songs. In particular, he says, he draws influence from the “poetic nature of Dutilleux”, the “rawness of Bartók” and the “orchestration of Stravinsky”.

Still, Dessner can be a puzzle. Listening to his restless, shape-shifting music, and thinking about his scrupulously polite, but guarded personality, I’m reminded of the famous remark by Peter Sellers: “If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.”

Dessner plays a miked-up upright piano at his home studio in Biarritz. Photographed by Bego Anton for the FT

So who is Bryce Dessner? He hesitates. “First of all, I’m a collaborator; I’m really open to the feedback of the musicians and I’m driven by that sense of human exchange. Secondly I’m a student.” Meaning? “I love throwing myself into the deep end and finding new ways of expression. That’s why I keep changing [genre] all the time.” Dessner smiles. “It probably isn’t a great business plan.” But does he care? Not a bit. “The Beatles weren’t worried about what was allowed and what wasn’t. I don’t think Stravinsky or Beethoven were either. They were curious and open-minded. And that’s why they made great art.”

Bryce Dessner’s residency with the Konzerthaus Berlin begins on September 5, konzerthaus.de

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