Sufjan Stevens’ song-based journey through the 50 states may have ended with 2005’s Illinois, but his latest musical liftoff point finds the Brooklyn singer-songwriter exploring a much broader speck in our universe : the solar system. Last month, Sufjan joined collaborators Nico Muhly and the National’s Bryce Dessner to debut the trio’s new planetarium-themed compositions at Cincinnati’s MusicNow festival. While final versions of their new tunes only came together the day of that gig, they’ve already begun taking the show on the road with a concert held last night in Amsterdam alongside the New Trombone Collective and Navarra String Quartet. There’s good news for those of us in other parts of the planet, though, as excellent clips of the show have found their way online, thanks to LysWantTwo. Here are some highlights:
“Neptune” + “Jupiter”
“Mercury”
“Venus”