Bill Murray Details New Classical Album ‘New Worlds’ With Tour
Bill Murray will release his new classical album with cellist Jan Vogler, New Worlds, in September via Decca Gold. The pair will premiere the stage show accompanying the project June 4th in Dresden, Germany, with an American debut scheduled for July 20th at the Festival Napa Valley in California. A North American tour will follow this fall.
New Worlds blends classical music, American standards and literary readings. The track list includes selections from composers like Johann Sebastian Bach and Maurice Ravel as well as authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. Murray will also perform several tunes, including Stephen Foster’s “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” and a West Side Story medley of “Somewhere,” “I Feel Pretty” and “America.”
Along with Murray on vocals and narration and Vogler on cello, the New Worlds ensemble features Vanessa Perez on piano and Mira Wang on violin. Murray described the project as “the collision of America and Europe,” to the New York Times. “We are from four different continents. And when the continents come together, the music moves right across the peninsulas from one to the other. It’s just a short journey from one continent to the other.”
Following the release of New Worlds, the ensemble will embark on a North American tour October 6th at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara, California. A shorter trek begins November 29th in Portland, Oregon and wraps December 4th in Arcata, California, though venues for some of those dates have yet to be announced. Additional concerts will be announced soon. More info is available on Vogler’s website.
New Worlds Track List (Unsequenced)
Johann Sebastian Bach – “Prelude” from “Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007″”
Walt Whitman – “Song of the Open Road” and “Song of Myself”
Stephen Foster – “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”
Ernest Hemingway “With Pascin at the Dome” from A Moveable Feast
Astor Piazzola – “La Muerte del Angel”
George Girshwin – “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from Porgy & Bess
Astor Piazzolla – “Oblivion”
James Fenimore Cooper – selection from The Deerslayer
Maurice Ravel – “Blues” from “Sonata for violin and piano No. 2”
James Thurber – “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox” from Writings and Drawings
Henry Mancini – Arr. Grafe 5 “Moon River”
Mark Twain – selection from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Leonard Bernstein – Arr. Stephen Buck “Somewhere,” “I Feel Pretty” and “America” from West Side Story
New Worlds Ensemble Tour
October 6 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Granada Theatre
October 7 – Palm Desert, CA @ McCallum Theatre
October 8 – San Luis Obispo @ Christopher Cohan Center
October 10 – Chicago, IL @ Symphony Center
October 11 – Buffalo, NY @ Kleinhaus Music Hall
October 13 – Toronto, Canada @ Koerner Hall
October 16 – New York, NY @ Carnegie Hall
October 26 – Dallas, TX @ AT&T Performing Arts Center
November 29 – Portland,OR @ Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
December 1 – Escondido, CA
December 2 – Palo Alto, CA
December 4 – Arcata, USA