74 Quotes by Bryce Dessner

When I'm scoring something like a string quartet, it's all notated music, so it's meticulously written in the score, which is very different than doing things by ear.

If you learn classical guitar, you play Bach, and then John Dowland. He's the greatest. He's interesting for many, many reasons.

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.

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.

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.

For a composer of concert music, 40 is actually very young. But for a rock musician, 40 is almost past due, where you think of rock music as really part of more youth-oriented culture.

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.

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.

There are all kind of corners of the musical world that are deeply influenced by the Dead that one wouldn't expect. Lee Ranaldo is a crazy Deadhead.