Musical route

A deeply disliked stretch of road has proven a powerful inspiration for a symphony written by musician Sufjan Stevens. The man was commissioned to write a piece of music about his home city by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and he opted to compose his piece about the infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Called the BQE by New Yorkers, the flyover features narrow lanes, has no hard shoulder and is badly potholed, while high traffic volumes mean that jams and accidents are frequent and it has the dubious honour
February 23, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
A deeply disliked stretch of road has proven a powerful inspiration for a symphony written by musician Sufjan Stevens. The man was commissioned to write a piece of music about his home city by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and he opted to compose his piece about the infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Called the BQE by New Yorkers, the flyover features narrow lanes, has no hard shoulder and is badly potholed, while high traffic volumes mean that jams and accidents are frequent and it has the dubious honour of being one of the two most congested roads in the US (the other is in Los Angeles). Stevens explained that the BQE is so loathed by its users that he wanted to transform the image of this despised route into something of beauty. The symphony also provides the soundtrack for a short film he made about the expressway. The city authorities plan to replace the road but in the mean time, some angry drivers caught in jams could be soothed if the music were to be played over a public address system.

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