The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway - so good, they wrote a symphony about it

Highways and driving feature heavily in popular song - from '60s surf groups to modern hip-hop - but how many roads get classical music written about them? Sufjan Stevens' The BQE is the honourable exception...
January 26, 2024

THE BQE- A FILM BY SUFJAN STEVENS


The BQE is a mixed-medium artistic exploration of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway by Sufjan Stevens. The project originally manifested in the form of a live show, performed on November 1–3, 2007. The show consisted of an original film, directed and written by Stevens, accompanied by an orchestra performing a live soundtrack.

The album recording was made after the rehearsals for the show. It was recorded live during a one-day session in Legacy Studios' A509 orchestral suite (since closed and demolished) with most of the group in the same large room together.

A multimedia package of The BQE was released on October 20, 2009. The set consists of a CD of the show's soundtrack, a DVD of Brooklyn-Queen Expressway footage that accompanied the original performance (not a film of the performance itself), a 40-page booklet with liner notes and photos, and a stereoscopic 3D View-Master reel. There is also a limited edition version that features the soundtrack on 180-gram vinyl and a 40-page BQE-themed comic book starring the show's hula-hooping wonder women, The Hooper Heroes.

The BQE was called a "symphonic and cinematic exploration of New York City's infamous Brooklyn–Queens Expressway." 

The BQE was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of their Next Wave Festival.

Related Content

  • Theia focuses on ANPR
    August 2, 2022
    Motorised lenses come in 4-10mm, 9-36mm, and 12-50mm focal ranges
    Read More
  • Brake, IAM concerned at government figures on UK drink-drive habit
    August 7, 2015
    Brake, the road safety charity, and the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), have responded to the latest government figures which they say show Britain is still failing to adequately tackle its drink drive problem. A final estimate shows 240 people were killed by drivers over the legal drink drive limit in 2013, while provisional estimates suggest at least that number were killed in 2014. However, the number of people seriously injured in drink drive crashes did fall by eight per cent to 1,100 from 20
    Read More
  • A journey into the Dilemma Zone with Econolite
    January 16, 2025
    Indecision on the road can kill. Econolite’s Sunny Chakravarty and Vincent Mayeda present new data-driven dilemma zone and intersection safety strategies for a Vision Zero future
    Read More
  • Changing driving conditions need ongoing driver training
    January 23, 2012
    Trevor Ellis, chairman of the ITS UK Enforcement Interest Group, considers the role of ongoing driver training in increasing compliance. It is over 30 years since I passed my driving test. The world was quite a different place then, in that there were only half the vehicles there are now on the UK's roads, mobile phones did not really exist and (in the UK at least) the vast majority of us drove cars which by today's standards exhibited dreadful dynamic stability and were woefully underpowered.
    Read More

Highlighted Content