Bryce Dessner: Aheym Kronos Quartet with Bryce Dessner

• 1 Aheym 10:00
• 2 Little Blue Something 07:56
• 3 Tenebre 15:11
• 4 Tour Eiffel 11:27
• Total Runtime 44:34

Info for Bryce Dessner: Aheym

Bryce Dessner, guitarist from The National and Clogs who has also collaborated with Steve Reich, Philip Glass, David Lang, Sufjan Stevens and many others releases his new album „Aheym“. The album finds Dessner collaborating with Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet, who are celebrating their 40th anniversary season. Aheym features four original compositions by Dessner performed by Kronos Quartet as well as an appearance by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Dessner and the quartet first crossed paths when Kronos founder David Harrington approached Dessner about writing a piece for the quartet’s performance at the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in 2009. The ensuing piece, “Aheym” (meaning “homeward” in Yiddish), was informed by the stories of Dessner’s Jewish immigrant grandparents who settled near the park and, as the pair’s collaboration grew, became the album’s title track.

To find the heart of Aheym, the startling new album of compositions by Bryce Dessner performed by the famed string ensemble the Kronos Quartet, we must look back to an earlier generation of classical composers and performers. There was a moment, several moments really, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when American concert music was resuscitated by a group of young composers—Steve Reich, LaMonte Young and Philip Glass among them—who not only spoke a new and vibrant musical language, but broke down the walls of the concert hall and the academy, opening their world to the light and noise of the rock and pop music of the times. John Cale of the Velvet Underground plays in LaMonte Young’s ensemble; Terry Riley’s A Rainbow In Curved Air leads directly to Pete Townshend’s synthesizer experiments with the Who; Philip Glass grabs the imagination of the young Brian Eno, and goes on to return the influence by composing symphonic variations on music by him and David Bowie. Into the midst of this moment came the Kronos Quartet, formed in 1973 to play this new music, and going on to define the openness of contemporary classical music as they tackled non-traditional composers from Jimi Hendrix to Laurie Anderson to Sigur Rós. Throughout their unique career, they have introduced several new generations to the traditions and techniques of classical concert music while continuing to champion new composers; in the process they have sold a few million albums.

So when the Kronos Quartet commissions Bryce Dessner, guitarist of The National, to write a series of pieces for them to perform and record, it can’t help but feel like the passing of a torch. Dessner, along with a number of his contemporaries, has absorbed the language of the earlier generation of composers into his musical DNA, and now sees no firewall between his solo composition work and writing and performing in a rock band. Bryce Dessner speaks naturally in both voices; he studied composition and guitar at university, discovering the music of Steve Reich through Electric Counterpoint, Reich’s piece for electric guitar, well before the National was conceived. Yet the dense stacked guitar chords that open “Tour Eiffel” might well come from a National song, with its slinky 7/4 time signature, just as the circular horn part on The National’s “Fake Empire” shows the profound influence of Reich and other minimalists.

The four pieces that comprise Aheym come from different compositional sources and moments. The title piece was inspired by Dessner’s Brooklyn neighborhood, with its deep history as a landing point for immigrants; “Aheym” means “homeward” in Yiddish, and the music evokes Dessner’s Polish immigrant ancestors and the wider sense of flight and passage. “Little Blue Something” was inspired by the Czech musicians Irena and Vojtech Havel, whose haunting compositions invoke minimalism, early church music and Czech folk melodies all at once; Dessner honored the inspiration by having the couple perform at the MusicNOW Festival he curates yearly in Cincinnati. “Tenebre” is Dessner’s meditation on light and music, commissioned by Kronos to honor Laurence Neff, their longtime lighting and stage manager. Heavily influenced by the dense choral music of Tallis, Palestrina and Gesualdo, the piece mounts to a finale where the Kronos Quartet performs overdubbed as three quartets, alongside the multitracked voice of singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens. The album closes with Dessner’s beautiful “Tour Eiffel,” written for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, with text based on a playful poem by Chilean poet Vincente Hudidobro. Building on Dessner’s bossa-like guitar, the piece struts elegantly to a virtuosic climax of voices and strings.

Bryce Dessner’s music for the Kronos Quartet will delight longtime followers of Kronos’ work and will challenge and surprise the National’s many fans. At the close of day, Aheym is first and foremost a definitive creative statement from an emerging composer whose music transcends the artificial barriers of genre and performance.

Bryce Dessner, guitar
Kronos Quartet:
David Harrington
John Sherba
Hank Dutt
Sunny Yang

Bryce Dessner
is a composer, guitarist, and curator based in New York City, best known as the guitarist for the acclaimed rock band The National. Their albums Alligator (2005), Boxer (2007) and High Violet (2010) were named among albums of the decade in publications throughout the world. Their most recent release, Trouble Will Find Me (2013), debuted at #3 on both the US Billboard Chart and the UK Albums Chart. Dessner has also received widespread acclaim as a composer and guitarist for the improvising new music quartet, Clogs. Bryce has performed and recorded with some of the world’s most creative musicians including songwriters Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Antony Hegarty and Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo; composers Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Nico Muhly and Michael Gordon; contemporary ensembles Kronos Quartet and eighth blackbird, and visual artist Matthew Ritchie.

As a composer, his recent commissions include “Murder Ballades” for eighth blackbird, a new work for So Percussion that will premiere at Carnegie Hall in November 2013, and an evening length collaboration with Brooklyn Youth Chorus celebrating the artistic endeavors of the Black Mountain College. In November 2013, Anti- will release the album Aheym featuring the first recordings of Bryce’s compositions, performed by Kronos Quartet. The album will include his compositions “Tenebre,” “Little Blue Something,” Tour Eiffel,” and “Aheym.”

2012 brought a collaborative song cycle with Sufjan Stevens and Nico Muhly called Planetarium, as well as new commissions for the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Other recent commissions include a Jerome Grant from the American Composer’s Forum and the Kitchen (NYC) for a concert of his music, a commission from Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna) to create a 40-minute spatial sound work for the Morning Line, and a string orchestra composition from the Amsterdam Sinfonietta entitled “St. Carolyn by the Sea.” Other important works include a commission by the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia for “The Lincoln Shuffle” (a composition in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s bi-centennial) and “The Long Count” (an origins story told in music and video, commissioned by BAM for the 2009 Next Wave Festival). Bryce also recently composed two string quartets, “Aheym” and “Tenebre,” for the Kronos Quartet.

Dessner is the founder and artistic director of the acclaimed MusicNOW Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio, which will present its ninth season in 2014. He is also a co-founder and owner of the Brassland record label, which is home to a diverse group of artists including the experimental rock duo Buke and Gase, celebrated young composer Nico Muhly and cellist Erik Friedlander. In addition, Bryce and his brother Aaron produced an extensive AIDS charity compilation, Dark was the Night, for the Red Hot Organization. The ambitious record features exclusive new recordings and collaborations from a long list of artists including David Byrne, Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Jones, Cat Power, Grizzly Bear, My Morning Jacket and Spoon. Dark was the Night has raised over 2 million dollars for AIDS charities as of January 2012. Dessner is a graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Music. He currently serves on the board of The Kitchen in New York City and is a composer-in-residence at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven.

Kronos Quartet
For 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning more than 800 works and arrangements for string quartet. A Grammy winner, Kronos is also the only recipient of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize. With a staff of ten, the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home-season performances, and education programs.

This album contains no booklet.