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My Brightest Diamond, Shark Remixes
Imaginitive reconstructions of MBD's Shark's Teeth by Son Lux, DM Stith, Roberto Lange, and Alfred Brown.
"Ice & The Storm" (Download)
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| latest news |
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The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), a multi-use urban arts center, is now selling tickets to Sufjan Stevens' composition entitled The BQE. Sufjan will be performing his interpretation of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) November 1-3 at 8PM at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. Click on more to read details from the announcement, or here to buy tickets for prices ranging from $25-50.
Tickets will move quickly, so do the same!
What is the BQE exactly? It's is an abbreviation for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a short but formidable interstate roadway that plows through the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, cascading upwards and onwards through historic landmarks and industrial playgrounds with the virtuosic twists and turns of a mammoth rollercoaster. Oh, but it's not quite the high-speed marvel of, say, Germany's Autobahn, nor does it have the international "prestige" of The New Jersey Turnpike, but the BQE inhabits a modest legacy of its own by intersecting, dissecting, and dismembering New York's most popular borough, offering awe-inspiring city views and voyeuristic vantage points of factories, condos, bridges, cemeteries, used car lots and, of course, people's living rooms. How does one reconcile an ugly cement expressway with the ever-changing phenomenon of Brooklyn? Like all things American, it is both beauty and beast.
Sufjan's performance of the BQE at BAM will include film accompaniment, a visual travelogue of the expressway and surrounding Brooklyn, shot in 16 mm and Super 8. But what is the musical piece, exactly? Not so easy to say. In an era that unravels musical forms, The BQE suffers an identity crisis. It is inspired by the programmatic symphonies of the Impressionists, but it aspires to the pageantry of Copland and the melodrama of a John Williams movie score. It could be a suite, a fugue, a theme and variation, a repetition of melodies, a canon, to name a few. What we can say is that the piece lasts about 30 minutes and will include a small band, a wind and brass ensemble, string players, and, of course, hula-hoopers. There is no singing. But don't worry: the remainder of the show will include Sufjan navigating through old and new songs. The same small voice, the badgered banjo, the glissandos of the piano, the pump organ, the acoustic guitar, and the inaudible thump of the human heart. |
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