Sufjan Stevens - "Planetarium"

Planetarium is the new collaborative album co-composed by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly and James McAlister. A completely re-imagined version of the project originally undertaken years ago and performed in various iterations around the world, Planetarium unites Stevens' vocals, McAlister's beats, Dessner's guitar performance, and Muhly's instrumental compositions - part rock odyssey, part electronic experiment, part classical opus. Conceptually, Planetarium revolves around the cosmic ideas Stevens' lyrics explore: mythology, astrology, science, astronomy and the intricacies of human consciousness. The album began when Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven commissioned Muhly to create a new piece and he enlisted friends Dessner, Stevens and McAlister, all of whom had been looking for the opportunity to collaborate on a larger scale. After sketching the framework of the song cycle and performing the piece as a band - flanked by a string quartet and seven trombones - in va