Tori To Perform With The Metropole Orchestra

ToriAmos.com has announced that Tori will be joining The Metropole Orchestra, the world’s largest professional pop and jazz orchestra, for a special performance at Amsterdam’s Heineken Music Hall on Friday, October 8th.

The concert is part of this year’s edition of The Week of The Metropole, a series of performances featuring the Orchestra along with other singers or musicians. At this time, the only other confirmed show in the series is the Dutch band Moke.

Tickets for this unique event will go are on sale through Eventim on Saturday, June 26th at 10:00 AM CEST right now.

Note: the Moke concert is on sale and it indicates that those outside of Holland wishing to purchase tickets for that show must do so by phone rather than online. The number they list is +31 205 11 00 70. As ToriAmos.com has also included a phone number in their announcement — albeit a different one: +31 900 10 10 20 20 — it seems possible that non-Dutch folk will have to go with phone orders as well. We’ll update that once we have more information either way. Tickets for this show can be purchased from any country.

Thanks to Holly, josh and Jane for making sure we didn’t miss this!

Only The Puppet Could Explain Just What He Was

A couple of theatre-oriented news sites have posted articles which shed some new light on the current state of The Light Princess, the musical Tori is writing the music for that we first heard about in an interview way back in May 2007.

According to Show and Stay and WhatsOnStage.com, the production, under the guiding hand of director Marianne Elliott (War Horse, Women Beware Women, Mrs. Affleck), has gone through its first workshop at the National Theatre which is said to have involved puppetry. Perhaps Mr. Puppethead was more than just a passing fancy after all!

Both pieces also state that The Light Princess is currently slated to premiere at the National’s Lyttelton Theatre in 2012.

Thanks again to Shireen86 for passing along these links!

Backstage at Bonnaroo With WXRT

Before taking the stage at Bonnaroo this past weekend, there was promotion to attend to. Tori played a short set consisting of “Upside Down,” “Roosterspur Bridge” and “Silent All These Years” for media and, as it turns out, must have done a few interviews.

Chicago radio station WXRT has shared their chat with Tori, where she discussed the differences between performing alone as opposed to with a band, on their blog. Additionally, they’ve posted all three songs she played backstage.

Thanks to @Shireen86 for bringing this to our attention!

NPR Music Comes Through At Bonnaroo

Even though they didn’t broadcast her performance live (or delayed), NPR Music did record Tori’s set at Bonnaroo and they’ve made it available in its entirety from their site.

Unlike the YouTube webcast which was restricted to those in the United States only, the NPR stream is available to all, regardless of your location.

Thanks to Tim and Parker for the heads up!

I Can't Think of a Pun For Bonnaroo. Can You?

Tori’s set at Bonnaroo is, as they say, in the bag and, with thanks to the kindly @KaranRulec and the festival’s webcast via YouTube, we’ve got the set for the full show posted in Tour.

The performance featured “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Secret Spell” (leavened with lyrics from “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, a collaboration between Pete Seeger and the Book of Ecclesiastes made famous by The Byrds), “Upside Down” (dedicated to Mother Earth in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), “Space Dog” (which included an off-the-cuff explanation for Neil’s absence) and “Love Song.”

As always, we’d love to hear what people in attendance thought of the show. If you were there, please feel free to post a review of the performance using the comment form on the Bonnaroo concert page.

Live From The Artists Den DVD Details

Update: Mere minutes after we finished this article, the DVD release details were posted to ToriAmos.com and Everything Tori, along with the pre-order link to Barnes & Noble! Shazam! (Now if we could only get some information about that fabled American Doll Posse tour DVD!)

Several music and entertainment news sites including Altsounds, Lena Lamoray and The Music Slut are now reporting details about the upcoming Tori Amos: Live from the Artists Den DVD release.

According to what appears to be a press release from The Artists Den, the limited edition DVD will be released on July 13th, the same week the episode premieres on public television, with an exclusive pre-order through Barnes & Noble. It’s not clear if Barnes & Noble will be the exclusive retailer for the DVD or not. Other Artists Den releases are available elsewhere so we’d guess that would eventually be the case for this DVD as well but we will have to wait and see.

The release will include all 12 songs performed at the taping (not just the 10 in the broadcast) and also feature an interview conducted by noted music journalist and critic Alan Light, a tour of the Park Avenue Armory’s Veterans Room lead by Tor and the directory of the Armoryi, a hardbound scrapbook featuring behind-the-scenes photos of the event and a history of the venue, and a print of a hand-written postcard by Tori.

As the text of the Lena Lamoray and Altsounds articles is identical, it would seem that their source is a sneak preview press release about the DVD so we would expect an official announcement about this on The Artists Den website and Barnes & Noble to appear soon.

Thanks to six58, Eliot and Armen for the tips!

Update: According to The Artists Den (and despite the claim of Barnes & Noble to the contrary), this DVD is region-free (Region 0) so it will be playable on any DVD player that supports NTSC. Thanks to elasia for doing the legwork to find that out!

Bonnaroo Webcast Information

For those of us who unfortunately (or, if crowds, camping and mud are not your thing, fortuantely) not attending Bonnaroo this weekend, much of the festival will be webcast on YouTube and npr.org.

We weren’t sure if any of Tori’s performance on Friday would be included in the live streams but Everything Tori has now confirmed that part of her set on Friday will be webcast on Youtube starting around 7:15 PM CDT. She is scheduled for 6:45 to 8:15 PM so it looks like we’ll get to see the middle portion of the performance though we’d guess not all of it.

Needless to say, we’ll be here Friday night minding the store and, if we can get updates from folks in Manchester, posting the setlist on Twitter as well as on our page for the performance. So if you’re headed the festival and would like to help us spread the news about the setlist, please get in touch!

One last point: we note with interest that many Bonnaroo performances are made available for purchase after the fact via Live Bonnaroo. Given Tori’s history with releasing live “bootleg” recordings, it sure would be nifty if her set were to see the light of day via that route. We don’t know if that’s in the cards or not but it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.

Thanks to Josh for noting the webcast!

More Details From The Artists Den

If one takes a quick tour around the website for WLIW, one of the co-producers of Live at the Artists Den, one will find a number of interesting items on their press page for the show. In addition to a couple of very high-quality (and large) promotional photos from the performance, there is also a program description that includes the songs to be included in the episode. Alas, a few songs were cut from the performance to fit into one hour. Hopefully, though, they will be included on the commercial release of the program.

The description is a PDF so we’ve included its text — behind the cut for those who want to remain surprised by the broadcast.

Thanks to BMac for the tip!

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Releases From The Artists Den

Live From The Artists Den: Season 2, a new collection featuring live performances from the upcoming season of this television program, is now available exclusively on iTunes US.

The compilation features 10 songs from the series, including Tori’s performance of “Ruby Through The Looking Glass” from the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

You can preview all tracks from the collection in their entirety using this handy-dandy player from Fairtilizer — and if your browser supports iframes, it’ll be on the right side of this story for easy-peasy streaming. Tori’s track is the second one.

Thanks to JamesB for that tip!

On a related note, the eagle-eyed joe noticed, buried in the text of the press release announcing the line-up of season two:

Artists Den Records offers live concert CDs and DVDs from our shows, such as our upcoming release, Tori Amos: Live from the Artists Den, recorded at New York’s Park Avenue Armory.

So it looks like we’ll have a live release of this collection to look forward to soon! More details as they are announced!

Summer 2010 Tour Update: May 27th

Tickets for the Paris concert went on sale this morning through avosbillets.com which, as it turned out, redirected to the venue’s official ticketing service hosted on rodrigue.fr.

Strangely, the show is still not listed on L’Olympia’s calendar. However, a call to the box office confirmed that that tickets will also be available through the venue starting on June 1st. So another block of tickets will probably go on sale then, in case anyone was unsatisfied with the seat options offered through avsobillets.com.

In other tour news, Livenation.co.uk’s listing for the London concert at the Apollo Victoria indicates that the opening act will be Harper Simon. Additionally, Emilie Simon has been replaced by Steve Mason as the opening act for the concert at Miles Davis Hall during the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Thanks to Rachel, Noémie and Nawal for helping out with the above info!