The 92YTribeca is celebrating its
first anniversary with a host of special events. A highlight will be a showing of BQE, a a film version of Sufjan Steven’s 40-minute symphonic and cinematic exploration
of New York
’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,
one of the indie world’s “most eccentric and personal
songwriters” is helping us blow out the candle in a multi-media,
venue-wide celebration. The event, part of a month-long anniversary
celebration at 92YTribeca, includes Stevens introducing two screenings of The BQE, a documentary that captures his
film and musical suite (performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next
Wave Festival in November of 2007). The BQE
is a film version of Sufjan Steven’s 40-minute symphonic and cinematic exploration
of New York
’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, “the infamous traffic artery
that severed neighborhoods and contoured waterways with the brute force of
modern urban planning.” The New York
Times calls it Stevens’ equivalent of the Godfrey Reggio-Philip
Glass film collaboration Koyaanisqatsi: “a skeptical view of development
that eventually falls in love with sheer motion.” The 92YTribeca
event, which coincides with the release of The
BQE on DVD, is the first time NY audiences will be able to experience
the multimedia project since the live event in 2007.
Of
course, at 92YTribeca, it’s not just about one element; we’re
making the whole night a Sufjan Stevens-experience. Osso, the string quartet with a modernist
pulse, performs interpretations of
Stevens’ eccentric electronica album, Enjoy
Your Rabbit (which is based on the animals of the Chinese Zodiac).
The group appeared on Stevens’ 2005 Come
On! Feel the Illinoise! and Songs
for Christmas albums, and has collaborated and performed with an array
of artists, including Jay-Z, Alice and Ravi Coltrane, The
New Pornographers, Antony and the Johnsons, The Polyphonic
Spree , The National, Devotchka and Kanye West.
For
more information about the event, visit www.92YTribeca.org