The BQE: Sufjan Stevens Puts Pavement to Music

Commissioned by and first performed (in 2007) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Sufjan Stevens’ orchestral suite isn’t strictly a musical event. His film comprises three linked panels of imagery on and along the ugly concrete ribbon that connects Brooklyn and Queens. (His project also includes a CD and comic book.) For us out-of-towners, it’s an immersion in unglamorous outer-borough New York: traffic and signage, warehouses and parking lots, with a cheerful squad of hula-hoop dancers occasionally interspersed for levity. Koyaanisqatsi it’s not. The 16mm footage, even in triplicate, isn’t that remarkable. Nor is the score—an Americana pastiche of Gershwin, Copland, Glass, and Bernstein—from an indie-rock tunesmith. (The music is better performed than it is written.) Still, considered as urban tone poem, there are moments of naive charm to Stevens’ roadside observations. Far from the Empire State Building, we see a giant purple inflatable gorilla, some debased cousin of King Kong, reduced to shilling for used cars. The BQE is as close to Hollywood as that poor monkey will get.