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Jun 08, 2017 By Christopher Roberts Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, and James McAlister

Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner (of The National), and James McAlister have all teamed up for a new collaborative album, Planetarium. It’s due out this Friday (June 9) via 4AD. They previously shared “Saturn,” via its video, “Mercury,” via its lyric video, and a video for “Venus.” Now Stevens, Muhly, and Dessner have done a performance of “Mercury” in a studio for NPR. They were also interviewed. Watch the performance and interview below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

The project started several years ago when Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven commissioned Muhly to compose a new piece and he asked his friends Stevens, Dessner, and McAlister to collaborate on it. Stevens and McAlister took the live recordings and adapted them into a studio recording. “We had recorded all the arrangements and the live parts in a studio after our last performance,” said Stevens in a previous press release. “So years later when we all kind of settled down, we said, ‘let’s open Pandora’s box.’”

The press release described the album as such: “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.”

Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, and James McAlister Planetarium Shows:

July 10 - Paris, FR - Philharmonie de Paris
July 18 - Brooklyn, NY - Celebrate Brooklyn! - Prospect Park
July 20 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Forever Cemetery
July 21 - Oakland, CA - Fox Theater

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