Sufjan Stevens

The follow-up to 2003’s Michigan, Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans was originally released on the 16th of March 2004. At the time the Guardian dubbed it “a record of remarkable delicacy,” and Billboard called it a “consistently moving, subtly beautiful experience.” And in the twenty years since its release, Seven Swans has cemented its place as a seminal album in Sufjan's catalog.

It may be tempting to reduce Convocations into a longform ambient anomaly within Sufjan Stevens’ vast catalogue. It is, however, neither an anomaly nor entirely ambient. This is not a side project. From his numerous dance scores for New York City Ballet to instrumental albums such as Enjoy Your Rabbit, Aporia, and The BQE, Stevens spends at least half his working life making largely instrumental music, as he has for decades.

The title of “The Decalogue” has a touch of the grandiose: it means “The Ten Commandments.” Yet this score, composed by Sufjan Stevens for a dance work choreographed by Justin Peck that premiered with the New York City Ballet in May of 2017, is quiet and experimental. Stevens’s piano score, as played and recorded by Timo Andres, sounds like etudes in the Romantic-modernist tradition, as if prompted by Debussy. With “The Decalogue,” releasing digitally and on deluxe edition vinyl on October 18, 2019 and standard edition and CD on December 6, 2019, Sufjan is making—gently, without ostentation—new departures.