Stevie Wonder working on gospel and symphony orchestra albums

Despite already having over twenty full-lengths to his name, soul legend Stevie Wonder says he’s currently working on three different projects.

The first seems to be a normal LP in the vein of the R&B/soul crossover we’ve come to expect. The others, however, are a bit more diverse.

“ David Foster has been talking to me a couple of years about doing some songs that I had done using a symphony orchestra,” Wonder recently told Rolling Stone. “It is a lot of things that I have done, old material, but doing it a different way. I’m going to do about three or four new songs as well. We did “Isn’t She Lovely” with the orchestra and I wrote another verse to it. And we did “I Just Called to Say I Love You” – myself and Take 6 with the orchestra.”

The other release is called Gospel Inspired By Lula and is, as the title suggests, a gospel record dedicated to Wonder’s mother. “I promised her I would do it. She always wanted me to do it before she passed away, the untimely passing away,” he told the publication before adding: “We’re going to do some traditional gospel stuff, but I’m thinking about doing a gospel song in Arabic. I’m going to twist it all up in different ways, because I think everyone needs to hear the word of the gospel.”

Wonder’s last album of original material, A Time to Love was released in 2005.