Arabic version: برايس ديسنر يقدّم أعماله الأوركسترالية في أستراليا

According to ABC News, The National guitarist and keyboardist Bryce Dessner is undertaking his first solo Australian tour of his orchestral music this month with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The classically trained Yale graduate, who co-founded The National in 1999, sees his work in rock and orchestral music as complementary, though he says an orchestra requires him to arrive with a fully completed score.

The tour includes the Australian debut of Dessner’s cello concerto Trembling Earth, written for Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina during his tenure as the Czech Philharmonic’s inaugural composer-in-residence. Inspired by an Oslo exhibition of Edvard Munch landscape paintings, the work reflects on the human condition, conflict, calamity and renewal. Dessner described it as a pastoral symphony shaped by difficult and traumatic times.

Landscape is a recurring element in Dessner’s music. His earlier work Impermanence, commissioned by the Australian String Quartet and Sydney Dance Company, responded to the Black Summer bushfires. Another Australian premiere, St Carolyn By The Sea, uses two electric guitars like harps against strings and was inspired by Jack Kerouac’s 1962 novel Big Sur.

Dessner said the concert hall has become a haven for human creativity in what he calls “algorithmic culture”, where audiences may encounter AI and computer-driven music. Trembling Earth, with Kobekina and Umberto Clerici, is scheduled for the Sydney Opera House on September 19 and 20. Bryce Dessner and The Sydney Symphony’s A Portrait In Music follows at Sydney City Recital Hall on September 24 and Melbourne Recital Centre on September 25.