Mystical Performances

Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy

Timrhu - thanks for that...I've been trying to get into Sufjan's music and find I'm hot and cold with it and have a hard time getting through his albums start to finish. I read your post and cued up the Gacy cut and really enjoyed that (from an album I otherwise had not listened to much). You might enjoy the first cut from Damien Jurado's CD, Where Shall You Take Me, titled "Amateur Night". Hypnotic and creepy in a different way than Stevens..similar subject matter....I don't know if I'd put it as a response to the OP's query though..it is hypnotic though, but I don't know if I'd put it in the company of those he listed. "Virtuosity" perhaps is not a word that would otherwise come to mind when I thought of that cut, but it is a very expressive use of music nonetheless.

I second Hugh Masekela - Hope and Lyle Lovett - Joshua, Judges, Ruth

Jax2, maybe "mystical" would be a stretch but the "John Wayne Gacy" but I have played it for a lot of people and have yet to have some say it did not raise the hair on the back of their neck. The first tome I listened to that album I was going along with attention flowing in and out. When the Gacy cut began I said "whoa, what was that." I was transfixed through the haunting vocal until the end when Stevens lifts his feet from the piano pedals. The ending makes me think of detectives lifting the floorboards of Gacy's house during their investigation.

Belafonte at Carnegie Hall

Janis Ian "Tattoo"

Rickie Lee Jones "Last Chance Texaco"

Dory Previn "Doppelganger" This one is REALLY creepy, sort of an H.P. Lovecraft story set to music