Don’t miss the Asthmatic Kitty/Unusual Animals Matinee Concert This Sunday!
@ Union Hall, Brooklyn, NY – $10, 1:30pm doors, ALL AGES.

Bring your tape cassette recorders!

See here for more information, or click more, below, for lineup and times.

FEATURING, in reverse order:

5:00 — OSSO String Quartet to play selections from Sufjan’s “Enjoy Your Rabbit," featuring Rob Moose, violin; Olivier Manchon, violin; Marla Hansen, viola; and Maria Bella Jeffers, cello.

4: 00 — SHAPES & SIZES lambast wild, gorgeous rock songs in celebration of the release of their new record “Split Lips, Winning Hips, A Shiner.”
Available NOW from the shop.

3: 00 –STARS LIKE FLEAS are awesome. Check them out here.

2:00 — FLYING, a collective of four artists, translate magic words and mysterious noises into chaotically sweet music.

Put on your Polka dots and broil a few sausages! It’s Casimir Pulaski Day! Who was this Polish American War General and why do we have so many bridges and tunnels named after him? Good questions. Outdated biographies and internet history sites tells us this much:

Born into a wealthy family in Poland in 1747, Casimir Pulaski, as a young man, fought for freedom from Russia in his homeland until 1771, when he was exiled to France. In Paris he met American envoy Benjamin Franklin, who influenced him to help Americans fight for their independence. Washington was so impressed with Pulaski’s abilities during the Battle of Brandywine Creek that he recommended the Continental Congress appoint Pulaski as general of the American cavalry. In 1778, Pulaski organized an independent corps of cavalry and light infantry known as the Pulaski Legion. It is reported that he spent $50,000 of his own money to help train and equip his troops.

"I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it," wrote Casimir Pulaski to George Washington in a letter in which he offered his military services to America during the Revolutionary War. He proved true to his word. At age 32, his heroic death at the Battle of Savannah on October 11, 1779 was received with sorrow across the land. General Pulaski’s life represents the dedication of countless Americans of Polish and other ethnic origins to the principles of personal liberty and independence, which have always defined the spirit of the United States of America.

Amen, brother!

Fast Fact: Illinois is the only state to officially recognize Casimir Pulaski Day, which falls on the first Monday of March. School is out!

In celebration, we’ve decided to post an early home demo of the song “Casimir Pulaski Day,” from Sufjan’s Illinois album, with clumsy banjo and slightly different lyrics. Q. What does the speaker consider doing “when your father found out what we did that night?" A. Pulling his hair and kicking him in the face! Woah. We’re not condoling violence in any way. But perhaps Casimir Pulakski, a remarkable fighter, would approve.

[Sufjan Stevens, "Casimir Pulaski Day" Demo (MP3)]

Tickets for the three-day Cincinnati  MusicNOW Festival are now on sale here.  The keen curating of The National’s Bryce Dessner has pulled in artists from around the world, including our own My Brightest Diamond and Sufjan Stevens.

Festival passes are just $60. Tickets to individual performances are $25. See more information here.

On April 5-7, Shara Worden, of My Brightest Diamond, and Sufjan Stevens are particpating in the Bryce Dessner-curated Music Now 2007 festival. Bryce is best known as the guitarist for The National and his instrumental band Clogs, and for being born in Cincinatti, Ohio.

Shara and Sufjan will be playing in the historic Memorial Hall, located in the even more historic Over-the-Rhine district of Cincinnatti. They won’t be alone though. The two will be taking turns on the stage with the veritable likes of string quarter Amiina (of Sigur Ros fame), renowned flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler, and experimental Czech duo Irena a Vojtěch Havlovi. Shara will serve as guest vocalist for the Clogs and Sufjan. They’ll even share a string quartet.

Passes for the entire festival cost only $60. Tickets to each individual performance will cost $25. The theater only seats 500, so watch the festival’s website for ordering information.

Audio links of fellow Music Now musicians follow.
The National’s MySpace page
Clogs, "Kapsburger" and "5/4" (MP3)
Amiina’s MySpace page

Nonesuch Records has invited Sufjan Stevens to open the new Joni Mitchell tribute album. Sufjan will be sharing space on the record with Björk, Prince, Evis Costello, and James Taylor. The album, appropriately entitled A Tribute to Joni Mitchell, will be released this spring.

Track listing follows."Free Man in Paris," Sufjan Stevens
"Boho Dance," Björk
"Dreamland," Caetano Veloso
"Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow," Brad Mehldau
"For the Roses," Cassandra Wilson
"A Case of U," Prince
"Blue," Sarah McLachlan
"Ladies of the Canyon," Annie Lennox
"Magdalena Laundries," Emmylou Harris
"Edith and the Kingpin," Elvis Costello
"Help Me," k.d. lang
"River," James Taylor

The Millennium Stage 10th Anniversary Celebration is a free, ticketed event. Tickets will be distributed on a first come, first serve basis with a LIMIT OF TWO TICKETS PER PERSON on SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2007.

9 am-10 am, tickets for SUFJAN STEVENS (members of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra) will be distributed in the HALL OF NATIONS (line forms to left of entrance). 10-11 a.m., tickets for the NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA will be distributed in the HALL OF STATES (line forms to right of entrance). 11 a.m.-noon, tickets for the ALVIN AILEY will be distributed in the HALL OF NATIONS (line forms to right of entrance).

Any tickets not distributed will be available at the Box Office beginning at 12 noon.
PLEASE NOTE: There will be no late seating for performances. There will be a live broadcast in the Grand Foyer of each performance for patrons who are unable to be here on the day of the ticket give-away, for those who arrive late, or for those who don’t have a ticket.

Please visit the Millennium Stage 10th Anniversary web page.

Photo by: Carol Pratt The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will celebrate ten years of free daily performances with a program on Monday, February 5, 2007. In an unprecedented event, the Center will present free performances in the Opera House and Concert Hall featuring different disciplines— Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing […]

See and hear Sufjan and the Band of Butterflies perform live on the Austin City Limits stage on Saturday, November 4th. Then stick around for gorgeous Southwest serenades by Calexico. Please consult your local listings and TiVo away, or find out when the program will be shown in your area at: http://www.pbs.org/klru/austin/

Celebrate Christmas on Halloween!? Who ever heard of such a thing? Of course we haven’t forgotten Halloween either.

In the same way that brisk, Northern wind whipped by you last week with its chilly reminder that the holiday season is closer than you think, here it is: Sufjan’s 5 CD Songs for Christmas in all its free, streamy goodness, available for enjoyment right now. These computer bytes of joy broadcast over the Internet feature albums recorded by Sufjan over the course of 5 yuletides (from 2001 to 2006), each employing different friends, instruments, and moods to tease and swizzle the Christmas spirit in all of us, even as early as October. Say, maybe it is time to swirl some shortbread and toss a little tinsel.

Of course, you can’t gift-wrap an internet stream. For those who prefer their Christmas with lovingly reused golden bows and Santa-in-pajama wrapping paper, we will be taking preorders for Songs for Christmas on October 31st, the Christmas of October to ship November 14th. This wonderful set weighs at least 15 pieces of coal, with 5 individually wrapped CDs, stickers, short stories, an essay, a video, a comic strip, songbooks, and an Official Original Christmas Family Portrait of Santa Sufjan! Check those off your list! If we could have placed the CDs in snowman adorned cookie tins and delivered them to you by hand at your Christmas office party, we would have. But we just don’t have enough helper elves.

[PRE-ORDER SONGS FOR CHRISTMAS]

[STREAM SONGS FOR CHRISTMAS]

Forget the 50 States. Christmas is a bigger concept. As some of you may or may not know, for the past few years, as a holiday tradition, Sufjan has embarked on an extraordinary experiment to record an annual Christmas EP. It started in 2001, the year of Epiphanies, and continued onward (skipping only 2004), culminating into an odd and idiosyncratic catalog of music that has only existed in the Asthmatic Kitty archives (and on a number of file sharing sites). The recording process took place every December, for one week, usually at home, provoking collaborations with friends, roommates, and musical peers. Armed with a Reader’s Digest Christmas Songbook (and a mug of hot cider) Sufjan & friends concocted a musical fruit cake year after year, implementing every musical instrument they could find lying around the house: banjo, oboe, Casiotone, wood flute, a buzzy guitar, hand claps, sleigh bells, Hammond organ, and some tree tinsel. Did we mention sleigh bells?

[Visit release page for more info]