Label: Nonesuch
Released 8/23/2024
"Illinoise: A New Musical (Original Cast Recording)" features music and lyrics by Sufjan Stevens based on his album Illinois a book by Tony Award-winning director-choreographer Justin Peck (Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, Carousel) and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview, Marys Seacole), and direction and choreography by Peck. Illinoise moved to Broadway in April 2024, direct from two critically acclaimed sold-out productions at the Park Avenue Armory and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Stevens’ beloved classic “springs to epic life on stage,” according to the Washington Post, with live music and vocals, choreography, and narratives centering on self-exploration and community set to the entirety of Stevens’ album. Its songs—with new arrangements by composer, pianist, and frequent Stevens collaborator Timo Andres and Music Supervision and Direction by Nathan Koci—range in style from DIY folk and indie rock to marching band and ambient electronics, performed by a live band and vocalists (My Brightest Diamond, Tasha, and Elijah Lyons).
Track listing:
-
Three Stars (or, Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois)
-
The Long Hike
-
Come On! Feel the Illinoise!
-
Jacksonville
-
Zombies
-
John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
-
The Man of Metropolis
-
Decatur
-
Chicago
-
To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament
-
Casimir Pulaski Day
-
Prairie Fire That Wanders About
-
The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!
-
In This Temple, as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth
-
The Seer’s Tower
-
Chicago (Reprise)
-
The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders
- Epilogue