To celebrate next year’s 50th anniversary of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells , the multi-million-selling and multi-award-winning album will be performed live in concert for a celebratory UK tour, which will include a date on Tyneside.
Part of the fabric of popular culture, Tubular Bells is well-known as an integral section of the soundtrack to the horror film The Exorcist . Its legacy was cemented with Oldfield’s performance of the album’s main theme at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, one of the rare performances of the project he has given.
Tubular Bells: The 50th Anniversary Celebration will feature an expansive live group, conducted and arranged by Oldfield’s long-term collaborator Robin Smith. It will see Tubular Bells performed in full, along with further Oldfield compositions, touring across the UK and beginning at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on February 3, right through until the end of March. The show stops off in our region at The Sage Gateshead on February 16, 2023.
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A version of the show premiered at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank in London last year, with The Times calling it "a slick presentation of Tubular Bells at 50", and the Mail on Sunday commenting "the bells do the business".
Tubular Bell s, created in 1971 and released in 1973, was the debut studio album by English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter Mike Oldfield. Aged just 17 when he started composing the music, Oldfield recorded and played almost all the instruments on the album, gained worldwide recognition when the opening theme was used for the soundtrack of The Exorcist , with the record going on to become the highest selling instrumental album of all time.
A bold and progressive piece, Tubular Bells is a journey through classical, jazz, folk, progressive rock and electronica which went on to win a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 1974. In the years after its release, it was a must-have album for those 'in the know' about music. The record is credited with helping Richard Branson build the Virgin brand. To date it has spent 287 weeks on the UK albums chart where it also reached number one.
The complex piece of music has seldom been played live but two years after the album's release was given a rare outing at Newcastle City Hall in October 1975 when an orchestral version was performed by the 64-piece Northern Concert Orchestra. (The support act that night, incidentally, was Tyneside jazz fusion band Last Exit, featuring a young bass player called Gordon Sumner, aka Sting).
Robin Smith, conductor of the show, was mesmerised by Tubular Bells the moment he heard it. He has collaborated with Mike Oldfield for more than 30 years, with performances of Tubular Bells including at Edinburgh Castle, and also the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.
Robin says: “Along with the musicians, I'm really thrilled to be offering this beautiful re-imagined version of Tubular Bells to a wider audience up and down the country. It was premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in August 2021 to great acclaim as an early celebration of Mike Oldfield’s stunning work - so to be touring the UK in the 50th year is a huge privilege for me and a perfect tribute to one of England’s greatest composers.
"The wonderful thing about Tubular Bells is that it never seems to age, the actual composition is just perfect and is as spell-binding now as it was 50 years ago. It incorporates so many things - folk and rock, blues and jazz which evoke such melodic beauty and drama. This performance also features others works by Mike, including Moonlight Shadow , Ommadawn and Summit Day ."
Tubular Bells: The 50th Anniversary Celebration is at at The Sage Gateshead on February 16, 2023. Tickets are available from www.mikeoldfieldofficial.com
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