Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens, born July 1, 1975, in Detroit, Michigan, is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and Broadway composer. Of Lithuanian and Greek descent, Stevens lived in Detroit until age nine, when his family relocated to Alanson, Michigan. He was raised by his father, Rasjid, and stepmother, Pat, and visited his mother, Carrie, in Oregon only occasionally after she remarried. His stepfather, Lowell Brams, later became the head of Asthmatic Kitty Records, the label Stevens co-founded with him. The name Sufjan is of Arabic origin and was given to Stevens by the founder of Subud, an interfaith spiritual community to which his parents belonged at the time of his birth.

Stevens received his early education at the Detroit Waldorf School, Alanson Public Schools, and Interlochen Arts Academy before graduating from Harbor Light Christian School. He went on to attend Hope College in Holland, Michigan, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and subsequently earned an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in New York City. During his school years he studied the oboe and English horn, both of which appear on his recordings, and did not take up the guitar until his time at Hope College.

His professional musical life began while he was still a student, playing with the Holland, Michigan folk-rock band Marzuki and the garage band Con Los Dudes, as well as performing various instruments with Danielson Famile. During his final semester at Hope College, Stevens wrote and recorded his debut solo album, A Sun Came, released in 2000 on Asthmatic Kitty Records. After moving to New York City to enroll in the writing program at The New School for Social Research, he recorded Enjoy Your Rabbit, a song cycle built around the animals of the Chinese zodiac that drew on electronica. He followed that with Michigan, a folk-oriented collection of songs and instrumentals referencing Detroit, Flint, the Upper Peninsula, and sites such as Tahquamenon Falls and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Beginning with Michigan, Stevens announced an ambition he called the Fifty States Project, through which he intended to record an album dedicated to each of the fifty U.S. states, though he later acknowledged the project had functioned more as a promotional concept than a serious long-term commitment.

A compilation of previously recorded material, Seven Swans, followed in March 2004. Stevens did not leave his position in the children's book division at Time Warner until he began touring in support of that album. He then released Illinois in 2005, the second entry in the Fifty States Project. The album explored subjects including the cities of Chicago, Decatur, and Jacksonville; the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893; the death of a friend on Casimir Pulaski Day; poet Carl Sandburg; and serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Stevens spent the second half of 2004 researching and writing the material. The album's original release was briefly delayed by legal issues surrounding the use of a Superman image on the cover artwork; the first 5,000 copies of the double vinyl pressing had a balloon sticker placed over the image, while subsequent pressings and the CD release omitted it entirely. Illinois reached number one on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, was the highest-rated album of 2005 on Metacritic, and earned Stevens the Album of the Year, Best Album Art/Packaging, and Male Artist of the Year awards at the 2006 PLUG Independent Music Awards, as well as the 2005 Pantheon prize. Pitchfork, No Ripcord, and Paste magazine each named it the best album of 2005.

In April 2006, Stevens announced that twenty-one pieces drawn from the Illinois recording sessions would form a new album, The Avalanche, released on July 11, 2006. That November, he released Songs for Christmas, a five-CD box set containing originals and Christmas standards recorded annually since 2001, with the exception of 2004, in collaboration with various contributors including minister Vito Aiuto. Stevens had undertaken the project initially as a personal exercise to develop a greater appreciation for the holiday. During the 2005 winter holidays he also recorded material with Rosie Thomas and Denison Witmer, which was later released in December 2006 digitally and in physical form on March 13, 2007, as the Rosie Thomas album These Friends of Mine.

In 2017, Stevens contributed to the soundtrack of the film Call Me by Your Name. The soundtrack's lead single, "Mystery of Love," earned him both an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and a Grammy nomination for Best Song Written for Visual Media. His tenth studio album, Javelin, was released in October 2023. Across his catalog of ten solo studio albums and multiple collaborative releases, Stevens has worked in styles ranging from the electronica of The Age of Adz and the lo-fi folk of Seven Swans to the symphonic instrumentation of Illinois and the holiday recordings of Songs for Christmas, frequently playing many of the instruments himself within a single recording.

Stevens's work extends to Broadway, where his credits include Illinoise, bringing his compositional voice to the theatrical stage.