Sufjan Stevens premiered the BQE
The premiere of “The BQE” at BAM’s gorgeous Howard Gilman Opera House was unlike any other Sufjan show. The audience may have offered as many heads with gray hair as those with elaborate hairdos. Before starting the last number in the “Sufjan Stevens Plays the Hits” part of the program, the singer said they’d been treated like royals during the making of “The BQE”, and hoped we’d had our money’s worth. By then I had decided that at times, performance and music can be two different things, and though I could already barely remember the particulars of “The BQE”, it had delivered the warm and fuzzy feeling with which I had hoped to renew my concert-going habit.
For “The BQE” part of the show, the plane of the stage facing the audience was divided into two horizontal strips. The upper began at the screen that hung from the ceiling, with three projections of video clips shown next to each other. The lower strip first consisted of shadows submerged in rich yellows and blues as the orchestra played behind it. In time, the screen rolled half way up to reveal the full orchestra, while the three projections above continued depicting the bizarre aesthetics of the BQE.
Sufjan has picked hula hoops as the metaphor for the circle that puts many things into motion, including wheels of a car. If any clue was to be taken from the music, cars are scary, and hula hoops, playing the prestigious role of the essential, are nostalgic, innocent and full of potential, brought to movement by the strong, yet subtle, swing of the human body. Three female hula hoopers played B, Q and E respectively. Their carefree appearance in the videos triggered a soft bubble of laughter consistently, especially in comparison to the harshness of the BQE, but out came the hoopers to the stage itself, joined by two tall, sturdy males who played the dots between B and Q, and Q and E! To my surprise, these two men where far more graceful with their hoops, dancing fluidly while the wheels kept turning about them. The dancers left, the orchestra kept playing, and as the footage turned into night, they came back with disco hula hoops to bring an end to this part of the show. Amidst the applause, Sufjan, who had been playing the piano all this while, came out swinging a hoop as well.
“Sufjan Stevens Plays the Hits”, the second part of the show, was exactly that. I couldn’t help noticing a major upgrade some of the accompanying animations have received . There was a star-themed one for “Seven Swans”, “Concerning the UFO” and “The Black Hawk War”, in which glowing dots against the dark floated up symmetrically to draw various shapes, including that of swans, the Lord, and the Devil, wistfully falling like dust as the other end of their trail still rose to build. There was also a peculiar piece that showed a bouncing moon to which little lumps of tiny human figures gravitated in masses.
Introducing “Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head!”, Sufjan spoke of the cars that gave life to the BQE, and how Detroit was the city that began it all. Then, he checked himself quickly, shaking his palms wildly, saying that he had just caught himself making up his own history and that in fact cars came from all over the world. He also recited a slightly more elaborate version of the summer camp / wasp story before playing “The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!”. In this version, the camp was an oboe camp where among 300+ young oboists there were two bassoonists who hadn’t been good enough for the bassoon camp. One of them had been his friend Joey Franky, with whom he was expelled before encountering the “wasp bird” in the wilderness.
The music of “The BQE” was successful in remaining more or less nuanced, especially considering its length. As for its pounding crescendos, they might have appeared to be in the right amount if it weren’t for more pounding crescendos attached to the end of a few hits as well. For these Sufjan hovered close to the piano, violently hammering the keys with all fingers. But some were juxtaposed with light, airy intervals, especially from the flutists, which balanced force and restraint in creating exactly the kind of the warm and fuzzy feeling I had looked forward to. Shara Worden was present as well, bringing her wonderful personality to the mix by way of sparkling, silver tights and hair puffed up to a remarkable height. As for Matt Moran of Slavic Soul Party, which has been bringing the Balkan to Brooklyn long before Beirut, tucked behind everyone as he was, I recognized him instantly from his head and his shoulder jerks.
