A few weeks after announcing a 26-date summer tour of North America, the Queen + Adam Lambert today unveiled details of more live shows that will see them return to Europe this year for 24 dates in arenas with a new stage and a line-up full of surprises.
The band will make one stop in Italy Friday 10 November at the Unipol Arena in Casalecchio di Reno (Bologna). The tour will continue across Europe until mid-December, with a closing show at London's Wembley SSE Arena on 15 December. This will be the band's first concert in Bologna.
I tickets for the concert at the Unipol Arena will be available on the official Ticketone circuit (online and points of sale) from from 10 a.m. on Friday 21 April. Le pre-sales exclusive to the fan club of Queen and of Adam Lambertinstead, will be active from 10 a.m. tomorrow, 19 April.
To prevent the phenomenon of secondary ticketing, for the first time in Italy tickets will be really nominal and not in the sole name of the purchaser: this applies to those purchased both on Ticketone (online and points of sale) and through the artists' fan clubs. It will be possible to purchase a maximum of 4 tickets per transaction e each ticket must bear the name of the actual concert-goer. Details on the possibility of a name change will be communicated later; in any case, only one change will be possible.
For the 2017 tour, the band will unveil a brand new show that will include a state-of-the-art production design. The choice of setlist will certainly take into account the 40th anniversary of the album by the Queen most successful, News of The World of 1977, which collects the immortal hymns We Will Rock You e We Are The Champions.
The drummer and co-founder Roger Taylor is keen to reiterate that the 2017 tour "it's going to be something completely different from the show we've presented in previous years. The production has changed so much, the technology has really come a long way. It has to be said though that we're not a band that pushes a button to play. It's all live at 100%. We're planning to do things we've never done before, or haven't done for a long time. We started as a studio band, that's what we were. The success of our songs was a side effect."
The guitarist Brian May confirms that the 2017 shows of the Queen will have a more ambitious musical agenda. "The audience knows the hits, so we have to satisfy them," he says, "but we can add something that people don't really expect. We're going to do it a bit more this time. There are a lot of worlds in Adam, which obviously fit our music. He can go wild and rock in a very energetic way, he has a thousand facets to discover."
Adam Lambert accepts the challenge of digging deeper into the band's repertoire of classics. "What people needed to know before they came to one of our concerts a couple of years ago was surely that we'd still be playing the big Queen hits that everyone knows and loves, but we thought we could get back into the game."he explains, "Change it up a bit, update the visuals, take advantage of new technology, vary the set list. We'll probably include a few more songs from Queen's rich discography that we haven't performed before, and I'm really excited about that.".
The great 2017 show of Queen + Adam Lambert has been tailor-made for the band by some of the most innovative talent. Responsible for design and production is Ric Lipson of Entertainment Architects Stufish Productions, world-renowned for its ground-breaking work for artists such as Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and U2, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Having lit the tours of stars such as Adele, Peter Gabriel and Kylie Minogue, Rob Sinclair is the acclaimed lighting designer who will be responsible for moving over 300 lights during the show. The fantastic laser elements are the work of ER Productions, who worked on the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics, which were watched by over 900 million people worldwide. Musically, the band includes Spike Edney on keyboards, Neil Fairclough on bass and Tyler Warren on percussion.
Since their first time together on stage during the final of American Idol in May 2009, the partnership between Queen and Adam Lambert proved to be hugely successful and now has more than 90 concerts in every corner of the globe under its belt. During the summer of 2012, the artists played across Europe for the first time, making their spectacular debut in front of half a million people in Kiev.
When the Queen + Adam Lambert embarked on their first tour of North America in 2014 were crowned Band of the Year at the 10th Classic Rock Roll of Honor Awards and Best Live Band of the Year in a poll of Ultimate Classic Rock readers. This critically acclaimed tour was followed by appearances at major summer festivals in South Korea and Japan and a sold out arena tour of Australia and New Zealand.
2015 was a busy year for the band, with over 24 sold out concerts in ten countries across Europe including one at the Mediolanum Forum in Assago, a triumphant return of Queen (this time with Adam) to Brazil as headliners at Rock in Rio and to Argentina and Chile. The summer of 2016 saw Queen + Adam Lambert headline 15 other European festivals starting with Rock in Rio Lisboa in Portugal, where they played to 74,000 fans on the first night, followed by Italy's only date in Piazzola sul Brenta and a long tour of Asian arenas including three shows at Tokyo's famous Budokan.
QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT
Friday 10 November 2017
Casalecchio di Reno (BO), Unipol Arena - via Gino Cervi, 2
Tickets
Standing room parterre: € 65,00 + prev.
South Stand: € 95.00 + prev.
Numbered Seats: € 75,00 + prev.
Tickets and VIP packages available at Ticketone (online and points of sale) from 10 a.m. on Friday 21 April. Be wary of unofficial sales channels!
