Brian Eno has not played that many concerts in the 50 years since he left Roxy Music, but he’s just announced his first-ever solo tour which happens this fall. It’s called “Ships across Europe” and is built around his 2016 album The Ship but will include works from other records, and he’ll be backed by the Baltic Sea Philharmonic (with conductor Kristjan Järvi), the actor Peter Serafinowicz, and longtime Eno collaborators Leo Abrahams and Peter Chilvers.
Currently the tour is five dates in Venice, Berlin, Paris, Utrecht and London (two performances on the same night. Here’s more from Eno:
The album The Ship is an unusual piece in that it uses voice but doesn’t particularly rely on the song form. It’s an atmosphere with occasional characters drifting through it, characters lost in the vague space made by the music. There’s a sense of wartime in the background, and a sense of inevitability. There is also a sense of scale which suits an orchestra, and a sense of many people working together. I wanted an orchestra which played music the way I would like to play music: from the heart rather than just from the score. I wanted the players to be young and fresh and enthusiastic. When I first saw the Baltic Sea Philharmonic I found all that…and then noticed they were named after a sea. That sealed it!
All dates are listed, along with a stream of The Ship, below.
Meanwhile, Brian Eno co-produced Peter Gabriel‘s new song “Road to Joy,” the latest from his upcoming album i/o. Gabriel’s been releasing a song a month, on the full moon. The song, features the Soweto Gospel Choir and Gabriel says, “I’m working on a project which is partly a story focused around the brain and how we perceive things and this song connects to that. It deals with near-death experience and locked-in syndrome situations where people are unable to communicate or to move. It’s an amazingly frustrating condition. There have been some great books and films about this subject, but at this point in our story the people looking after our hero manage to find a way to wake him up. So, it’s a lyric about coming back into your senses, back to life, back into the world.
Brian Eno also recently released Secret LIfe, a collaborative album with Fred Again..
Brian Eno – 2023 Tour Dates
10-21 Venice, Italy – Venice Biennale Musica, Teatro la Fenice (3 and 8 p.m.)
10-24 Berlin, Germany – Philharmonie Berlin
10-26 Paris, France – La Seine Musicale
10-28 Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg
10-30 London, England – Royal Festival Hall, Southbank (6.30 and 9 p.m.)