Coldplay to Practice ‘Magic’ in Los Angeles and New York
With the release of Ghost Stories a little over a month away, Coldplay have lined up a series of six intimate shows around the world, two of which are in the U.S.
On May 5th, the group will play New York City’s 2,900-seat Beacon Theatre, which opened in 1929 and has welcomed the likes of the Dalai Lama and the Rolling Stones over the years. And on May 19th – the day the record comes out – they’ll play Royce Hall, an 1,800-seat theater on the UCLA campus that has hosted concerts by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa since its opening, also in 1929. The band has also planned concerts in Cologne, Germany, Paris, Tokyo and London between April and July, but it has yet to announce when tickets go on sale for the U.S. dates.
Coldplay’s ‘Ghost Stories’ and 26 Other Must-Hear Albums This Spring
The group announced Ghost Stories, its first record since 2011’s Mylo Xyloto, in March with the release of the single “Magic,” for which it later filmed a magic-themed video featuring frontman Chris Martin playing both the hero and the villain. (The band has just released a behind-the-scenes video, below, showing how Chris Martin flew in the video and how actress Ziyi Zhang learned knife-throwing.) That same month, they performed at the iTunes Festival at South by Southwest where they debuted four songs off Ghost Stories, including the chilly track “Midnight,” which they had teased in February. Later in March, the group showed just what tricks they had up their sleeves when they played all of Ghost Stories on an Los Angeles soundstage. Martin opened the gig by saying, “Welcome to my standup comedy show.”