Blur frontman Damon Albarn has announced an Australian solo tour headlined by a December performance at the Sydney Opera House.
The Grammy Award-winner is heading to Australia in support of April’s debut solo album, Everyday Robots, with a second Melbourne show to be announced soon.
Albarn will be accompanied by his new live band, The Heavy Seas, which includes guitarists Seye Adelekan and Jeff Wootton, drummer Pauli The PSM, Mike Smith on keyboards as well as a string quartet and a six-piece choir.
“Damon Albarn is one of the great figures in modern music and we’re incredibly proud to present his debut solo performance in Australia,” Head of Contemporary Music at Sydney Opera House Ben Marshall said.
“His restless inventiveness, inquisitiveness and taste across all his projects have been an inspiration to me and this will be an amazing summer evening in the Opera House Concert Hall.”
Albarn, the man behind virtual band Gorillaz, was expected in Australia earlier this year alongside Pearl Jam and Arcade Fire as Big Day Out headliners before Blur withdrew from the bill at the last minute.
“That was going to be the last Blur show – the end of playing together – and I didn’t want it to finish on anything other than a very positive note, because Blur is incredibly precious to all of us,” Albarn said in March.
“But I was genuinely concerned that the whole [Big Day Out] thing wouldn’t be quite as spiritually conclusive as we hoped it would be, because we weren’t sure if the organisation was quite right, or supportive of our ambitions.”
Damon Albarn 2014 Australian Tour
Monday, 15th December 2014
Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall), Sydney
Tix: Via Sydney Opera House | 9250 7777
*Melbourne date to be announced.
