Quotes by Bryce Dessner - Page 2

When we learned to play in bands, what we were covering was equal part the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead. That would defy the logic that somehow these things don't fit in the same musical well.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Covering
Equal
Grateful
Logic
Musical
Velvet
Bands
Defy
Grateful Dead
Somehow
Underground
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Inviting artists to do something, you want it to be a place where they're going to feel challenged and excited and that will maybe open up some new doorway in their own lives or their own creative practice.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Inviting
Challenged
Doorway
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There is a kind of adventure- and risk-seeking audience in classical contemporary music that is really empowering and part of what draws me to it. The people that come to these concerts are open-minded and curious.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Adventure
Concerts
Contemporary
Contemporary Music
Draws
Empowering
Music Me People
Classical
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A lot of people ask how I ended up doing classical music given that I'm in a rock band. The truth is that it's the other way around. I was trained as a classical musician and then started playing in a rock band later.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Classical Music
Truth Music People
Classical
Rock Band
Trained
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For years The National has been labeled as a gloomy kind of rock bandI think mostly because of Matt’s deep baritone voice, which even if he is singing about unicorns and butterflies, he just sounds sad most of the time.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Butterfly
Rocks
Thinking
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For me, the exhausting thing about touring is the sitting around, which is why working on my concert music is really great - and also seeing concerts and seeing friends and, whenever possible, getting out to see a museum.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Exhausting
Music Great Me
Concert
Museum
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The thing I realised about composition is, we remember most composers for four bars of music. Four singable bars of music. Pretty much any major composer from Debussy to Ravel to Mozart to whoever else - you can kind of hum it.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Bars
Composer
Debussy
Ravel
Realised
Hum
Mozart
Whoever
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A good song is a nice set of chords and some good lyrics; a great song is a song that reinvents itself over time. That you can always find something interesting in the more you listen to it - it keeps revealing something to you.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Interesting
Nice
Song
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Obviously there are pieces of classical music that are some of the most beautiful music ever written, for me anyway is a lot of classical or contemporary music, so it's a different kind of space that you enter when you're listening to it.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Space
Beautiful
Listening
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When working with classical musicians, it is important to be clear as possible in the score about what my intentions are. Because there isn't a lot of rehearsal time, especially at the ballet, it's best if everything is written in the score.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Ballet
Rehearsal
Score
Time Best Important
Classical
Best Time Important
Intentions
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Being a classical musician, you can go to school for it; you can go get a degree. Even as a composer, there is a certain career path you can follow, but becoming a rock musician is a much more elusive career. How do you learn that or do that?
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Career Path
Elusive
Classical
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Obviously, any living musician born after 1960 has been touched by rock and roll. It's the music of our time, and it's 'in the air,' as Steve Reich would say. My experience of it is just really direct because I'm actually playing in a collaborative band.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Our Time
Rock And Roll
Touched
Time Experience Music
Reich
Steve
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There is a reactionary conservative side of classical music, which is not the most exciting side of it. The side that draws me in, there's a real encouragement of risk-taking, going back to masters of that tradition like Beethoven and Bartok and Stravinsky.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Encouragement
Classical Music
Draws
Masters
Risk-taking
Stravinsky
Music Me Real
Beethoven
Classical
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When I'm writing for certain instruments, you want to write within what you know about that instrument but also challenge the player. Something like 'Aheym' is very virtuosic - but because I have a history of performing music, I don't like unplayable music.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Instrument
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I've always been in rock bands. I was in a rock band with my brother in high school. Then I was playing classical guitar recitals, and people said, 'You know, you can't really do both things.' My intuition told me they were wrong. Somehow, what was interesting about me was that I had those two things in my life.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Band
Brother
Classical Guitar
High School
Intuition
Life Guitar Me
Classical
Rock
Rock Band
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As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Collective
Cultural
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David Harrington asked me to write a piece for Kronos Quartet for a performance in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I live just two blocks from the park and spend many mornings running around it. The park for me symbolizes much of what I love about New York, especially the stunning diversity of Brooklyn with its myriad cultures and communities.
Bryce Dessner / Composer
Brooklyn
Stunning
David
Blocks
Cultures
Mornings
Myriad
Park
Prospect
Quartet
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Bryce Dessner Quotes - Page 2

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