David Longstreth’s Song of the Earth, a song cycle for orchestra and voices, will be released on 4 April 2025. Performed by Longstreth with his band Dirty Projectors—Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell—and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, conducted by André de Ridder, the album also features Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and includes words by the journalist David Wallace-Wells.

Just as Dirty Projectors’ Rise Above sounds nothing like Damaged—the Black Flag album upon which it was based—Song of the Earth bears little resemblance to its namesake: Gustav Mahler’s 1908 song-poem Das Lied Von Der Erde. But Longstreth notes that “it is saturated with the Mahler work’s themes, feelings, and spirit of dissolved contradiction.”

Longstreth wrote the first draft of Song of the Earth in six “manic” weeks for a commission arranged by s t a r g a z e, feeling disoriented, but also galvanized, by the moment he was in: the pandemic chaos, the “radical psychedelia” of new fatherhood, the novelty of writing for large ensemble. He then spent three years revising, rewriting, rearranging, and recording in studios and homes in the Netherlands, Los Angeles, and New York City.

Song of the Earth marks Longstreth’s biggest-yet foray into the field of concert music. It received its US premiere in a March 2024 sold-out performance at Disney Hall in Los Angeles with the LA Philharmonic. Work-in-progress performances also took place between 2022 and 2024 at the Barbican in London, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, and Muziekgebouw Amsterdam.

Song of the Earth

Tracklist

1. Summer Light
2. Gimme Bread
3. At Home
4. Circled in Purple
5. Our Green Garden
6. Walk the Edge (with Anastasia Coope)
7. Opposable Thumb
8. More Mania
9. Spiderweb at Water’s Edge (with Patrick Shiroishi)
10. Mallet Hocket
11. So Blue the Lake
12. Dancing on our Eyelids
13. Same River Twice
14. Armfuls of Flowers (feat. Steve Lacy)
15. Twin Aspens (feat. Mount Eerie & Patrick Shiroishi)
16. Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One
17. Kyrie/About My Day
18. Shifting Shalestones
19. Appetite (with Tim Bernardes)
20. Bank On (with Portraits Of Tracy)
21. Paper Birches, Whole Scroll
22. Raven Ascends (with Patrick Shiroishi)
23. Blue of Dreaming (with Ayoni)
24. Raised Brow