Bryce Dessner
Born: 1976, Cincinnati, Ohio
Mari
- Composed: 2020
- Premiere: February 3, 2021 at the Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic by the Czech Philharmonic, Semyon Bychkov conducting
- Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cowbells, crotale, glockenspiel, light snare, low bells, marimba, snare drum, tam-tam, tom-tom, triangle, 2 vibraphones, xylophone, 2 harps, celeste, strings
- CSO notable performances: These are the first CSO performances of Mari.
- Duration: approx. 18 minutes
Bryce Dessner is a vital and rare force in new music. He has won Grammy Awards as a classical composer and with the band The National, of which he is founding member, guitarist, arranger and co-principal songwriter. He is regularly commissioned to write for the world’s leading ensembles, from Orchestre de Paris to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is a high-profile presence in film score composition, with credits including The Revenant, for which he was Grammy- and Golden Globe-nominated, Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes, Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon and Bardo by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Dessner collaborates with some of today’s most creative and respected artists, including Philip Glass, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Paul Simon, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Sufjan Stevens, Fernando Meirelles, Thom Yorke, Bon Iver, Nico Muhly and 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.
Bryce Dessner has had works commissioned and premiered by today’s leading conductors, including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Semyon Bychkov and Santtu-Matias Rouvali. One recent season saw performances of his works by, among others, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, BBC Symphony Orchestra, HR Sinfonieorchester, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. His Violin Concerto, commissioned by partners including Orchestre de Paris, Philharmonia Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony, and Mari, commissioned and performed by Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, Czech Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic and BBC Symphony Orchestra, have been met with widespread public and critical success.
In addition to his role as one of eight San Francisco Symphony Collaborative Partners, Bryce Dessner has been Artist-in-Residence at London’s Southbank Centre and with Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Major works include Concerto for Two Pianos, premiered by Katia & Marielle Labèque and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon; Violin Concerto, premiered and performed internationally by Pekka Kuusisto; Trombone Concerto for Jörgen van Rijen and commissioned by the Dallas Symphony and l’Orchestre National d’Île de France; Voy a dormir for mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and Orchestra of Saint Luke’s and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Skrik Trio for Steve Reich and Carnegie Hall; the ballet No Tomorrow co-written with Ragnar Kjartansson; Wires for Ensemble intercontemporain; The Forest for large cello ensemble, Gautier Capuçon and Fondation Louis Vuitton; and Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), a major theatre piece integrating the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Dessner also scored the music—involving full orchestra and a 200-member choir—for the Louis Vuitton show at the Louvre in Paris as part of Paris Fashion Week 2020.
Dessner’s recordings include El Chan and St. Carolyn by the Sea (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 the Australian String Quartet. Dessner’s other film score credits include The Two Popes, which won Discovery of the Year at the World Soundtrack awards; C’mon C’mon (2021) directed by Mike Mills; and Cyrano (2021), the major musical by Joe Wright.
Also active as a curator, Dessner is regularly requested to program festivals and residencies around the world at venues such as at the Barbican, Philharmonie de Paris and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. He co-founded and curates the festivals MusicNOW in Cincinnati, HAVEN in Copenhagen, Sounds from a Safe Harbour, and PEOPLE.
Bryce Dessner lives in France.
Dessner has written the following about Mari, which was commissioned and performed by Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, Czech Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra:
During the pandemic of 2019–2021, with most of the world shut down and concerts cancelled, I thought a lot about the impermanence of so many things that we imagine to be eternal. An orchestra can sometimes seem like the most lasting form of performance: every major city has an orchestra and the masterpieces they perform seem like eternal pillars of our culture. But what if those orchestras never played again? What if these great works of art become but mere echoes, gradually fading in our memory? These are the thoughts I had during this year when the orchestras fell silent and the musicians and audiences stayed home. At the outer reaches of our memory would the sounds of those works combine into a kind of woven tapestry of fragments and recollections? Could it all slow down into a beautiful aquatic drone? I thought about how the act of composing, conjuring sounds from one’s mind or imagination, is very similar to this feeling. A kind of reverence for a world of music we have shared, how memories combine into something original, a spark of creativity or imagination or a dialogue with something that came before. Semyon Bychkov, for whom this piece is written and dedicated, lives just minutes from me on the Basque coast of France, but we did not see each other for several months during the pandemic. On many long walks through these beautiful forests and mountains, I imagined him reflecting on those great pieces in his own vast repertoire and how the sounds of the forest and the quiet of the beautiful natural world might intertwine with his own musical memories. My orchestral composition Mari is a reflection on the pastoral, and it weaves together several textures and fragments of material from historic works through a kind of abstraction and altered context to something new, most audibly a melody from the first movement of the New World Symphony by Dvořák and textures from the fourth movement of Mahler’s sublime Symphony No. 3. My work is named after the Basque goddess of the forest, Mari.
As a concert opener, it felt appropriate to let these notes pass through my fingers and open a new doorway through which my own voice could emerge. The music of Dvořák and Mahler feels timeless but also distinctly modern, especially now as we emerge again into a new world and listen for what comes next.