In 2018, I got a request from (YSM alum!) Bryce Dessner to write a piece for the debut of his new ensemble, Dream House Quartet, which he started with fellow electric guitarist David Chalmin and the pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque. I have been a friend of Bryce’s for a million years and I was very happy to get to write a new piece for him, and my first thought was to honor the fact that I knew Bryce but not the other players. My idea was to write a musical figure for Bryce that would never change much but would never repeat exactly, and which would go through the entire piece, from start to finish. All the changes in the flow of the piece come from how the other players hear what Bryce is doing – do they double his part, do they echo in canon, do they hold certain notes and let others go? Bryce’s part is “ever-present” but the music does change, depending on what the other instruments can hear.
