This summer Beck will once again give his fans a night at the symphony. After performing a series of shows backed by an orchestra last year, the Grammy-winning music icon has announced a run of 2025 orchestral shows.
The tour will comprise nine North American shows this July. It begins July 15 in New Haven and concludes two weeks later in San Diego, with stops along the way including Montreal; a pair of Toronto gigs; the Ravinia Festival in Chicago-area Highland Park, Ill.; Colorado Springs; and the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colo. General ticket sales for all shows begins this Friday, March 7 at 10 a.m. local time except the Ravinia Festival, which will go on sale at a later date. Presale information for the tour can be found at beck.com.
At each date, Beck and his band will be backed by a local orchestra, under the supervision of conductors including Edwin Outwater and Christopher Dragon. Together, they’ll perform materials from classic Beck releases including his genre-jumbling 1996 landmark Odelay, 1998’s stripped-down yet eclectic Mutations, 2002’s string-laden breakup masterpiece Sea Change, and 2014’s Morning Phase, which won Album of the Year at the 2015 Grammys. Some surprises are also reportedly in store.
Though Beck built his reputation as a culture-jamming party-starter and underground rock balladeer, orchestral music is part of his family heritage. His father, David Campbell, is an acclaimed composer, conductor, and arranger who has often contributed string arrangements to Beck’s music. The artist’s catalog adapts naturally to the symphonic context, as evidenced by the positive reviews of last year’s orchestral shows. Rolling Stone raved, “The orchestral arrangements were the real star of the night, a signpost of his maturity as an artist,” while the Philadelphia Inquirer chimed in, “The Philadelphia Orchestra could hardly have picked a more suitable partner for its final pop-classical collaboration of the year in Philly than Beck.”
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