Groban plans to ‘let go’ in upcoming show
Radio City Music Hall booked for Feb. 14, April 18
Josh Groban has a date for Valentine’s Day — with 6,000 or so of his fans.
The singer-song writer said Tuesday he has booked New York ’s City ’s massive Radio City Music Hall for a Feb. 14 show that he promises will be a night of music with specia l g uests and plent y of spontaneous, of f-the-cuf f seg ments.
“I am most fulfilled when I am most scared so I’m excited to have the opportunity to terrif y myself,” Groban told The Associated Press on the eve of the announcement. “As my tours have gone on, I have found that really where the good stuf f lies is when you let go.”
In addition to Valentine’s Day, Groban has also booked Radio City for April 18 and hopes he will return to the venue for a new show ever y few months. Tickets for the first two shows go on sale Friday.
“This is something that ’s so f un an idea for us that if this winds up just being t wo shows, it still would have been an incredible experience. I’m just excited to get in there and do this,” he said. “If it ’s something people love to see, I’ll keep coming back.”
While details are still being worked out, the show will have an orchestra, band and choir — “all the bells and whistles that go into a reg ular ‘me’ show,” Groban said — plus g uests and impromptu interactions with fans. He promised that no two shows will be the same.
“Ever y thing that we have up our sleeve is still completely in development,” he said. “We have 100 ideas and we are going to, from now until Feb. 14, whittle them down,” he said.
“The key was to make it loose, to make it impromptu. My fans have seen 18 years of touring where they ’ve seen a ver y well-rehearsed show but then there have been these glimpses of rea lly improvisational, fun moments that can occur even in the arenas. And those are the moments where the room just lights up.”
Groban has been nominated for a Grammy, Emmy and Tony.
His latest album is 2018’s “Bridges,” his eighth studio album, and he was on Broadway in 2017 for a run in “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.”
He compared Radio City to places like Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden. “There’s something holy about those places. You walk into a space that has so much energ y from past per formances, the histor y that ’s in the walls.”
There’s also a more personal element to picking the venue. Groban early in his career played three nights at Radio City Music Hall. “The first time I felt the love and support of a New York audience was at that theater,” he said.
He’s returned for concerts and co-hosted the Tony Awards there with Sara Bareilles in 2018. “It ’s been a good-luck venue for me,” he said, though he also called it the “most challeng ing venue” because he needs to find the intimacy in such a large space.