When I saw this on the NY Observer's website, I thought it was a joke..From Brooklyn Academy of Music's website:
A prolific singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer with a penchant for storytelling, Sufjan Stevens reveals the epic in the everyday in songs infusing the vernacular of Midwestern folk with a distinctly orchestral grandeur. Stevens pairs orchestrated selections of both new and old material with the 25th Next Wave Festival commission/world premiere of The BQE—a symphonic and cinematic exploration of one of New York's least celebrated monuments: the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Robert Moses' controversial 11.7-mile roadway tears through neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens with the brute force of modern urban planning, and in Stevens' hands becomes an evocation of the intersection of intimate experience and the American Dream. Merging a virtual road trip shot on film with a live band and orchestral ensemble, The BQE discovers abstract patterns and stories in the snaking traffic, potholed pavement, billboards, badly marked exits, and beautiful city views, revealing what happens when Manifest Destiny converges with urban blight.
Coming soon: Donald Manes - the Musical!
8 comments:
bellevue is calling.
Been there; done that. The Queens political morons put on a "revue" every year in Theater-in-the-Park. Crowley puts on his fetid boots and strums the guitar, no-talent Katz screeches to the rafters, Vallone does goombah "comedy" wearing shades, and Helen Marshall does an up-dated version of Le Petomane.
Another "optimistic" young face
sporting a vintage super 8 home movie camera.
Yawn....cinema vertigo!
Wattsa matter.....couldn't afford 16 mm format?
Did Queens Council On The Arts
provide some grant money ?
They're also a joke!
These kind of guys are as bad as those Columbia U.
students that are unleashed on our borough
every semester .....striving to make their versions
of "Gone With The Wind" documentaries!
I bet the epic will be intertwined with the heroic struggle of soviet labor (sorry, wrong one party state - let me start again)
I be the epic will be intervwined with the heroic struggle of the immigrants whose very presence rejunvenates our city and nation.
There, that's better.
FYI...
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (I-278)
http://www.nycroads.com/roads/brooklyn-queens/
Queens Council on the Arts? More like Queens Council on Diversity. That's what they say they're looking for on their application forms: "artwork that celebrates the Borough's diversity."
Diversity is fine, but when it comes to art an artist should be allowed to do their own thing and not have to twist and turn their work about to make it accord with an agenda.
"an artist should be allowed to do their own thing and not have to twist and turn their work about to make it accord with an agenda."
Several generations of now out of work Soviet artists would disagree with you.
Well there is always China and certain small nations scattered about.
and of course, Queens.
Democratic Dictionary:
Robert Moses: builder
used in a sentence -
"Robert Moses's policy of massive civic projects was a BUILDER of campaign donor influence and political careers."
see also:
"Neighborhoods and constituents can always be destroyed and rebuilt."
"A generous campaign donor can never be replaced."
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