Second Thoughts

Above, you can see Central Park South, a strip of yellow light down the center of the stage. Across the top is the Manhattan skyline. To the left is Central Park. On the stage is seating for three vocalists (who also tried their hand at Glockenspiels, guitars, and a banjo), a percussionist, a bassist, four violins, two violoas, two cellos, two trumpets, and one trombone.

Below, you can see this audacious arrangement in action as the players go at a rendition of "Jacksonville". Sufjan, their conductor, sways modestly as he runs up and down the repeating riff at the end of each line of the verse. He's not an incendiary guitar player, but he blends it well into the arrangements. What look likes 30 or 40 microphones pick up each quiver of violin bow, flick of tamborine wrist, and Sufjan's frail, hushed voice.

It is the combination of his unpretentious, personal songs, a dream-tour through American stories and sensibilities , with the triumphant ambition of his arrangments, that make this music like nothing else. They are both scaled-down and monumental, and they deserve this kind of setting. Sufjan is the modest, understated conductor of symphonies.

This is the way music ought to be seen. I understand the importance of dark venues where you have general admission and you stand smashed in with lots of other fans--it doesn't apply here.

For an encore he played "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", accompanied with one vocalist, the song for which he has probably become most well-known. The simple falsetto cry of those three words, "oh my God", stretched out and allowed to float and fade in the song's eerie space, left the venue silent. As the program notes suggest, written by the senior editor of The New York Times Book Review, this is "the moment the song falls of a cliff, into the utter unknown." A simple bow and Sufjan made his exit, leaving us with the raining evening and the orange glow of city lights in its midst.

Photos courtesty of Jeeperstseepers.