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When Sufjan Stevens was asked to write a symphony for New York, he turned to a miserable stretch of road called the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway for inspiration. He tells ANDREW PURCELLwhy

THE BQE, as New Yorkers call it, has narrow lanes, no hard shoulder, countless potholes, and is usually one long traffic jam. As sources of artistic inspiration go, it’s an unlikely one; but when eccentric singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to write a symphony about the city he calls home, he immediately turned to this crumbling concrete flyover. “It inspires loathing, resentment, anger,” says Stevens of the BQE. He calls the work “a wilful romance with an object of scorn”.