The anticipation surrounding Illinoise, the stage musical and dance performance inspired by Sufjan Stevens’ revered album of the same name, has been building for quite some time. Following successful runs at Chicago’s Shakespeare Theater and New York City’s Park Avenue Armory, Illinois has now arrived on Broadway, opening at the St. James Theatre, just in time for eligibility at the 2024 Tony Awards.
Since its debut at Bard College in New York last spring, the production has garnered wide acclaim from critics.
Upon its release in 2005, Stevens’s concept album, comprised of 26 songs dedicated to the state of Illinois, quickly resonated with a generation of listeners. Through the album, Stevens weaved together historical figures, local references, and personal narratives, alternating between marching band arrangements and intimate banjo strums. Despite its specific geographic focus, the album’s themes of loss, rediscovery and the universal human experience connected with audiences worldwide.
Since its debut at Bard College in New York last spring, the production has garnered wide acclaim from critics.
Upon its release in 2005, Stevens’s concept album, comprised of 26 songs dedicated to the state of Illinois, quickly resonated with a generation of listeners. Through the album, Stevens weaved together historical figures, local references, and personal narratives, alternating between marching band arrangements and intimate banjo strums. Despite its specific geographic focus, the album’s themes of loss, rediscovery and the universal human experience connected with audiences worldwide.
- 4/29/2024
- by Baila Eve Zisman
- Uinterview
The setting for Illinoise, Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s emotionally supercharged reinterpretation of the 2005 Sufjan Stevens concept album, is various locations across the Land of Lincoln — a cornfield, a hiking trail, a woodland clearing, the suburban home of a serial killer, a small town in the middle of nowhere, the top of a skyscraper and, of course, Chicago, with an out-of-state detour to New York City. But the real setting of this thrilling dance-musical-concert hybrid, alternately rhapsodic and shattering, is our collective youth.
Without a word of spoken dialogue, the show pulls us into late adolescence, a time when love, anguish and everything in between are felt perhaps with the greatest intensity. The book co-written by director-choreographer Peck and Drury (who won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with her brilliant meta-theatrical race inquiry, Fairview) is skillfully shaped yet invisible in the best sense of undiluted physical, sensorial and elemental storytelling.
Without a word of spoken dialogue, the show pulls us into late adolescence, a time when love, anguish and everything in between are felt perhaps with the greatest intensity. The book co-written by director-choreographer Peck and Drury (who won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with her brilliant meta-theatrical race inquiry, Fairview) is skillfully shaped yet invisible in the best sense of undiluted physical, sensorial and elemental storytelling.
- 4/26/2024
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Director and choreographer Justin Peck’s Broadway adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’ seminal 2005 album Illinoise opens later this month, and today, producers Orin Wolf, Seaview, John Styles, and David Binder and executive producer Nate Koch announced the three vocalists set to help bring Stevens’ music to the theater.
Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, and Tasha Viets-VanLear will provide vocals for the show’s Broadway debut. All three performed during recent sold-out productions at the Park Avenue Armory and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Nova, who also records as My Brightest Diamond, provided backing vocals...
Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, and Tasha Viets-VanLear will provide vocals for the show’s Broadway debut. All three performed during recent sold-out productions at the Park Avenue Armory and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Nova, who also records as My Brightest Diamond, provided backing vocals...
- 4/5/2024
- by Jeff Ihaza
- Rollingstone.com
Update, with vocalists announced: Illinoise, the acclaimed dance-musical stage adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 concept album Illinois, will transfer from Off Broadway’s Park Avenue Armory to Broadway’s St. James Theatre next month, arriving just a day before this season’s Tony Award eligibility cut-off date.
The musical, with direction and choreography from Justin Peck and a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, begins performances with a matinee at the St. James on Wednesday, April 24, which will serve as the engagement’s Tony-qualifying opening performance. Broadway reviews will be embargoed to Friday, April 26, a day after the April 25 Tony cut-off.
In a busy late-season Broadway schedule unrivaled in memory, Illinoise becomes the 14th show scheduled to open between April 11 and April 25. Three of those dates will see not one but two shows open: Patriots and The Heart of Rock and Roll on April 22; Illinoise and Uncle Vanya on...
The musical, with direction and choreography from Justin Peck and a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, begins performances with a matinee at the St. James on Wednesday, April 24, which will serve as the engagement’s Tony-qualifying opening performance. Broadway reviews will be embargoed to Friday, April 26, a day after the April 25 Tony cut-off.
In a busy late-season Broadway schedule unrivaled in memory, Illinoise becomes the 14th show scheduled to open between April 11 and April 25. Three of those dates will see not one but two shows open: Patriots and The Heart of Rock and Roll on April 22; Illinoise and Uncle Vanya on...
- 3/19/2024
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s not hard to imagine what Justin Peck heard in Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 album Illinois that convinced him that the music pulsated with possibilities for dance. Illinois, with its orchestral textures, surprising mixed-meter rhythms, and impressionistic instrumental interludes, is an explosively varied 75 minutes of music as Stevens’s lyrics traverse the history, geography, and iconography of the Prairie State. At its best, Peck’s stage adaptation, which arrives at the Park Avenue Armory following a run at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, suggests that rapturous movement was somewhere inside Stevens’s songwriting from the start.
In Illinoise (the show’s title follows the stylized spelling on the album’s cover), a 14-piece band including three featured vocalists, pay thoughtful homage to Stevens’s original arrangements. Since Stevens played over 20 instruments on Illinois, watching the full band, led by Nathan Koci, can feel like the songwriter’s solo artistry has fragmented...
In Illinoise (the show’s title follows the stylized spelling on the album’s cover), a 14-piece band including three featured vocalists, pay thoughtful homage to Stevens’s original arrangements. Since Stevens played over 20 instruments on Illinois, watching the full band, led by Nathan Koci, can feel like the songwriter’s solo artistry has fragmented...
- 3/8/2024
- by Dan Rubins
- Slant Magazine
Big Red Machine stopped by The Late Show to showcase their new song “New Auburn.”
In the performance, Aaron Dessner takes on the piano part and is joined by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Anais Mitchell, the Westerlies, and the National’s Scott Devendorf, as well as drummer Jt Bates and keyboardist Nick Lloyd. The intimate song sees Mitchell sharing vocals with Pecknold, who stands in for band member Justin Vernon.
“New Auburn” is the closing track on Big Red Machine’s the upcoming collaboration-heavy LP How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?...
In the performance, Aaron Dessner takes on the piano part and is joined by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Anais Mitchell, the Westerlies, and the National’s Scott Devendorf, as well as drummer Jt Bates and keyboardist Nick Lloyd. The intimate song sees Mitchell sharing vocals with Pecknold, who stands in for band member Justin Vernon.
“New Auburn” is the closing track on Big Red Machine’s the upcoming collaboration-heavy LP How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?...
- 8/11/2021
- by Emily Zemler
- Rollingstone.com
Big Red Machine, the duo of the National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, have shared the opening track “Phoenix” from the upcoming collaboration-heavy LP How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?
The latest single features singer Anaïs Mitchell and Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, who co-wrote and co-produced the song. Named after the Arizona city, “Phoenix” marks the first collaboration between Pecknold and Big Red Machine.
“’Phoenix’ was one of the last songs we wrote for this record,” Dessner said in a statement. “I was...
The latest single features singer Anaïs Mitchell and Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, who co-wrote and co-produced the song. Named after the Arizona city, “Phoenix” marks the first collaboration between Pecknold and Big Red Machine.
“’Phoenix’ was one of the last songs we wrote for this record,” Dessner said in a statement. “I was...
- 7/22/2021
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Big Red Machine — the collaborative project of the National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon — have dropped a new single, “Renegade,” featuring vocals from Taylor Swift.
Swift and Aaron Dessner recorded “Renegade” in Los Angeles at the Kitty Committee studio in March 2021. The song was created by Swift and Dessner the same week they took home the Grammy for Album of the Year for folklore. Vernon recorded additional vocals at his studio, April Base.
The song will appear on the band’s upcoming album, How Long Do...
Swift and Aaron Dessner recorded “Renegade” in Los Angeles at the Kitty Committee studio in March 2021. The song was created by Swift and Dessner the same week they took home the Grammy for Album of the Year for folklore. Vernon recorded additional vocals at his studio, April Base.
The song will appear on the band’s upcoming album, How Long Do...
- 7/2/2021
- by Emily Zemler
- Rollingstone.com
Big Red Machine — the collaborative project of the National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon — have released a new song, “Latter Days,” from their upcoming album, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?, out August 27th via Jagjaguwar/37d03d.
“Latter Days” is a plaintive piano ballad filled with atmospheric and textural touches, with lead vocals provided by singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell. On the chorus, Mitchell’s voice melds with Vernon’s falsetto as they sing together, “I recall it all forever/How it found us...
“Latter Days” is a plaintive piano ballad filled with atmospheric and textural touches, with lead vocals provided by singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell. On the chorus, Mitchell’s voice melds with Vernon’s falsetto as they sing together, “I recall it all forever/How it found us...
- 6/29/2021
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Laurie Anderson has landed a year-long residency at Joe’s Pub in New York City after receiving the Public Theater’s 2020 Vanguard Award and Residency prize.
Anderson will receive the award at the third annual Vanguard Gala, set to take place February 3rd. The event will feature a night of performances from various artists, with Shara Nova of my Brightest Diamond serving as the musical director.
While an exact launch date has yet to be announced, Anderson’s residency will comprise monthly Sunday night performances between March and December.
“I love Sunday evening shows,...
Anderson will receive the award at the third annual Vanguard Gala, set to take place February 3rd. The event will feature a night of performances from various artists, with Shara Nova of my Brightest Diamond serving as the musical director.
While an exact launch date has yet to be announced, Anderson’s residency will comprise monthly Sunday night performances between March and December.
“I love Sunday evening shows,...
- 10/10/2019
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
My Brightest Diamond examines self-discovery through communal groove on her new song “It’s Me on the Dance Floor.” The whirlwind track previews singer-songwriter Shara Nova’s upcoming fifth studio album, A Million and One, out November 23rd via Rhyme & Reason Records.
The single opens with an eerie organ section and a steady, programmed kick drum pulse. “I’m all alone, turn the lights low,” Nova croons over fragmented backing vocals. “Maybe it’s me, it’s me I’m looking for/ It’s me, it’s me on the dance floor,...
The single opens with an eerie organ section and a steady, programmed kick drum pulse. “I’m all alone, turn the lights low,” Nova croons over fragmented backing vocals. “Maybe it’s me, it’s me I’m looking for/ It’s me, it’s me on the dance floor,...
- 10/18/2018
- by Ryan Reed
- Rollingstone.com
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