My buddy, Kevin, his blog here, wrote this up about the show we attended together last night:

The BAM Opera House was entirely sold out, and the crowd was amazing - totally well behaved and respectful, all huge Surfin’ Stevens fans, it seems.

There was an orchestra and band of at least 32 pieces, with Sufjan playing piano in the middle, while a guy conducted the strings and horns.

The BQE piece was just beautiful. It’s a multimedia piece with live orchestra, film footage and interpretive dance. Imagine his most intricate, lush instrumental jams and then imagine it on crack. Easily ten times more complicated, dramatic and jam packed with lovely melodies and grooves. The BQE score would be an outstanding soundtrack to play while you write, paint, or just plain dance around the apartment. It’s so great and complex.

And (I didn’t realize this going into the show), Sufjan also shot all the film that accompanies the music. Dude’s got game for real. The film was beautifully shot on 8mm film, then either slowed or accelerated to match the musical pace. The footage was shot either on or around the BQE, and wonderfully illustrated the dichotomy of the BQE’s sheer ugliness as a road with the beauty and color of the neighborhoods and scenery it runs through. Lots of great traffic shots, pans through little neighborhoods, landscapes. It was just gorgeous footage.

Also, in typical Sufjan campy form, at certain points of the show, as screen would drop down and exhibit only the silhouettes of the orchestra, and then he had a group of 5 dancers come out and interpret the music by dancing with hula hoops. Yes, hula hoops.

If you want to read the liner notes from the playbill click HERE. Interesting stuff. Ole Sufjan has quite a vocabulary. He gives a little background on what drove him to explore the BQE.

Click HERE to watch a YouTube clip of one of the BQE pieces from a radio interview they did on WNYC. (Although it’s great for a sample of the work, not to rub it in, but this video does the piece no justice whatsoever.)

After a rollicking opening set from the full orchestra. the curtain lowered for intermission. Afterward, Sufjan came back and played a full set of his usual songs with the 32 piece orchestra! This was positively amazing and a sight I will not likely ever experience again. Truly beautiful to hear his songs rendered in full scope.

At one point, Sufjan treated the audience to a three or four minute ramble about his experiences as a badly behaved kid and being sent to “oboe camp” for punishment. Thus ensued a barrage of details: a melted plastic oboe, a fellow camp exile named Joey Frankie (”The kid with two first names” haha), and a bird that sounded like a musical instrument that tried to kill him and Joey Frankie while they walked through the woods after being kicked out of oboe camp.

An unreal evening, on many accounts!

Here’s a stab at the setlist:

Seven Swans
Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois
The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning
Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)
Jacksonville
Casimir Pulaski Day
John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us!
The Barn Owl*
Majesty Snowbird*
Chicago

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