New-old Sufjan Stevens Record on the way
Run Rabbit Run
Sufjan Stevens is to release a new record in the autumn – but it won’t be the next entry in his 50 states project. Entitled Run Rabbit Run, it will be a reworking of his second album, 2001′s Enjoy Your Rabbit, which was ‘a series of fourteen programmatic instrumentals inspired by the animals of the Chinese Zodiac’.
Run Rabbit Run will consist of the songs from Enjoy Your Rabbit reworked for Osso, the group of musicians who contributed the string arrangements to My Brightest Diamond’s Bring Me The Workhorse and Sufjan’s exceptionally well-strung Illinois. Osso is made up of Rob Moose (violin), Olivier Manchon (violin), Marla Hansen (viola), and Maria Bella Jeffers (cello) – Hansen and Jeffers recently accompanied DM Stith, also on Asthmatic Kitty, on his European tour. The idea was apparently given to Sufjan by Bryce Dessner, of The National; his sister Jessica contributes the album cover.
If this doesn’t sound collab-tastic already, there’s more: the pieces from Enjoy Your Rabbit have been re-arranged by a number of young composers, including Michael Atkinson, Olivier Manchon, Maxim Moston, Nico Muhly, and Gabriel Kahane. So, this still sounds pretty interesting, even if it’s not a proper new Sufjan Stevens record. Which we’re sure will arrive at some point. Read more about the album, and a back story involving a rabbit called Pantouf which includes the line ‘Could music cast a magic that, let loose in the world, enables such private visions to pollinate a wider swath of imagination than the private imaginer could ever hope to think of?’ here.
Tracklist:
01 Year of the Ox (arranged by Michael Atkinson)
02 Enjoy Your Rabbit (arranged by Michael Atkinson)
03 Year of the Monkey (arranged by Michael Atkinson)
04 Year of the Tiger (arranged by Rob Moose)
05 Year of the Dragon (arranged by Nico Muhly)
06 Year of the Snake (arranged by Olivier Manchon)
07 Year of the Horse (arranged by Rob Moose)
08 Year of the Sheep (arranged by Maxim Moston)
09 Year of the Rat (arranged by Olivier Manchon)
10 Year of the Rooster (arranged by Gabriel Kahane)
11 Year of the Dog (arranged by Rob Moose)
12 Year of the Boar (arranged by Michael Atkinson)
13 Year of Our Lord (arranged by Michael Atkinson)
