Let’s not reduce Bryce Dessner to ‘guitarist with The National’. In recent years, he has composed an impressive oeuvre as an art music composer: from his sinfonietta for electric guitar St. Carolyn by the Sea, to a ‘boxing match’ of a violin concerto for Pekka Kuusisto. These are – not unimportantly – the two works by Dessner that the Brussels Philharmonic will perform during the Ars Musica festival. Although the main thing to look forward to is the Belgian premiere of a brand new piano concerto dedicated to Alice Sara Ott, who also takes to the keys in Brussels.

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Inspired by the beauty of Alice Sara Ott’s pianism and dedicated to his sister Jessica Reese Dessner, Bryce Dessner’s piano concerto celebrates dance as both movement and music.

St. Carolyn by the Sea, inspired by Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, translates the Beat Generation writer’s hallucinatory visions into a concerto with contrasting post-romantic and abrupt movements, performed by Dessner himself and David Chalmin.

Finally, Dessner’s violin concerto, performed by star violinist Pekka Kuusisto, draws a parallel between walking, wandering, and the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, close to where Dessner resides. Shaped by land and ocean, the movements of this violin concerto form a symbolic, pastoral, and musical journey.