Planetarium unites Sufjan Stevens’ vocals, James McAlister’s beats, Bryce Dessner’s guitar performance, and Nico Muhly’s instrumental compositions in a far-reaching musical journey: from lush piano ballads to rock anthems, classical cadenzas to electronic beats with Stevens’ distinctive vocals providing a centre of gravity. The album revolves around the ideas Stevens’ lyrics explore: mythology, astrology, science, astronomy and the intricacies of human consciousness.

Planetarium began when Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven commissioned Muhly to create a new piece and he enlisted friends Dessner, Stevens and McAlister, all of whom had been looking for the opportunity to collaborate on a larger scale.

After sketching the framework of the song cycle and performing the piece as a band-flanked by a string quartet and seven trombones-in various forms, the quartet put the project on hold for several years.

Returning to the raw material in 2016, Stevens and McAlister reversed their typical process, taking recordings of the live show and adapting to the studio.

“We had recorded all the arrangements and the live parts in a studio after our last performance,” says Stevens, “so years later when we all kind of settled down, we said, ‘let’s open Pandora’s box.’”