Van Morrison to Bring Astral Weeks Show Back to California

The resurrection of Van Morrison’s watershed 1968 album “Astral Weeks” in concert continues to expand with the Irish singer’s announcement of plans to bring it back to California for several more performances.

Morrison will present the work in its reconfigured entirety at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre on May 2nd and 3rd and then will return to Los Angeles for three more nights at the 2,000-seat Orpheum Theatre in downtown from May 7th through the 9th.

The world premiere performances of “Astral Weeks” live took place at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California over two nights in November. A CD version of that performance was released in February of this year, and a DVD from those shows is slated for release on May 19th.

Morrison told The Los Angles Times that the Hollywood Bowl’s historic significance led him to choose it for the first live performances and as the site for the CD/DVD recording with the full orchestration he’d long had in mind.

“The orchestral arrangements just came alive — the whole thing just worked,” he said after the Bowl shows. “We hit the stage and the Magi or whoever just waved the wand and we flew. Even now, listening to the live recording of the shows, I hear something different and profound every time I replay something. It took me a while to understand that we really did it, and made it into something even more different than it already was.”

Subsequently, Morrison decided to add more shows in New York at Madison Square Garden and the Beacon Theatre, and has two more dates scheduled at London’s Royal Albert Hall before returning to the U.S. for the added shows in California.

This is an edited version of an article written by Randy Lewis for the Los Angeles Times. For more information on Van Morrison you can visit his website, vanmorrison.com.

Source: smoothjazznetwork.com

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