Our featured series Crate Digging Delves into music history to uncover several albums that every music fan should know. In this edition, The National's Bryce Dessner discusses 16 essential classic albums that should be in your collection.
Depending on your media diet, you may know Bryce Dessner as a member of the long-running indie group The National or as a prolific film score composer (The Revenant, The Two Popes, Sing Sing). What those in the first group will be surprised to learn, and what those in the second group will be excited to remember, is that Dessner is also a deeply studied and remarkably accomplished figure in the world of contemporary classical music.
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Dessner, who has collaborated with Western music icons such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, has received commissions from a number of prestigious institutions, from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (for the New York Philharmonic) and the New York City Ballet. Suffice it to say, this guy knows a thing or two about how to compose a score.
Fortunately for fans of his Minimal, Baroque and Late Romantic-inspired work, Dessner is preparing to share Alone (out Friday, August 23 via Sony Music Masterworks), a collection of unaccompanied instrumental tracks by the artist.
“I'm proud of it. It's music I wrote at different points in my career, but it all feels like me,” he says. Consequence“I always think that the piece I just wrote is the one that touches my heart the most, but they are all pieces that I am proud of. In some ways, they are coherent, since they were made at different times. I am surprised at how well they fit together.”
Performed by a long list of Dessner collaborators, Alone This is not a solitary excursion. Listening to the work, fans will be able to appreciate the talents of cellist Anastasia Kobekina, violinist Pekka Kuusisto, pianist Katia Labèque, harpist Lavinia Meijer, violist Nadia Sirota, percussionist Colin Currie and, of course, Dessner himself on guitar.
“Frankly, if I’m going to be very humble, these musicians are incredibly brilliant. To have one of them on an album is incredible; to have all of them on an album is absurd,” Dessner says of the performers. “Each one of them surprises me. It’s like I wrote a piece, but then they come back with their own interpretation of it.”
Fans of The National need not fear, however, as Dessner has not forgotten his… other group of collaborators. The band released two full-length albums last year, The first two pages of Frankenstein and Laughter trackand they have a co-headlining tour with The War on Drugs starting in September (get tickets) here).
“We’re always jamming, but I think we’re going to take a little break after this tour and give ourselves some time to breathe before we play again,” he shares.
Meanwhile, the polymath is celebrating the release of AloneTo do this, he shared with Consequence 16 must-have classical albums that he says everyone should own. (Yes, pedants, we know that “classical” can technically refer to a specific era of Western music, but it’s a useful shorthand for the kind of music Dessner is happy to highlight.) Check out his full list below.
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