Deep Purple’s management has announced a massive Canadian tour in 2012. The tour will start on February 2 in St.John’s, Newfoundland, and finish on February 26 in Vancouver, BC. They will play 17 dates in every major (and some minor) city of the country apart from Montreal and Quebec City, where the band has performed last summer on the orchestral tour.

Full details in our calendar. These will be updated once we get ticket info.

How about a ticket to see Deep Purple next Christmas?
New European dates just arrived, see the tourdates page for details

Planet Rock Radio’s Darren Reddick has just interviewed Ian Gillan and Roger Glover in the UK. During the show it was mentioned that tonight Deep Purple are to receive the Classic Rock Roll of Honour Innovators Award (whatever that is…)
You can listen to the show, and the interview here using their listen again feature.

for those having trouble finding the link try here the interview starts at about 1hr20 in

The premier of the film ‘Chopin’s Story’, presented by Ian Gillan, is to receive its premier on November 25th at Progresja in Warsaw. As well as the launch of the film the venue will also play host to Polish rock band Kruk. A potential November DVD release is also being planned.

Exctracts of an interview with Jerzy Szkamruk below:

Who came up with the idea of getting Ian Gillan for the project and what did you want to achieve by that?

It is a long story. The idea of getting a worldwide formula star as a narrator for the documentary had been evolving for a couple of years. We were to do a film about the salt mine in Wieliczka with Ruthger Hauer, but nothing really materialised. Roman Rogowiecki was involved in that project and we were really close to make it happen. In the Chopin Year [2010] I asked Roman to find a person who would narrate Chopin’s story in an entertaining way. We were considering a couple of people, but Roman was bent on getting Ian Gillan who received our film and developed a great liking to it. And so Ian became the narrator of our film.

Okay, we all know that film recording requires some sort of discipline. Was Ian disiciplined on the set as the presenter?

Indeed, he was. Ian comes from very firm branch of show business and we knew it perfectly well that if he copes on stage and in many different projects (the one in Gdansk with Baltic Philharmonics, his duet with Pavarotti and many, many more) he must be somewhat disciplined. It’s no doubt, because years of working on stage, shape every human being. Apart from that, all the show businnes people, or people from what we call in Poland ‘the West’ are folks who succeeded thanks to the discipline and nothing else. Work, work and work!

Exactly. Ian recollects on your cooperation with a lot of warmth. How did you feel the work with such an artist as Ian was going for you?

I’ve said it before that I’m glad we did the shooting before Deep Purple’s concert in Katowice not after. It was in concert where it dawned on me how mighty Deep Purple and their music is. Owing to this seemingly unimportant fact, I treated my work with Ian as a laid back experience. Of course there is always stress because of vartious doubts, but after the first few takes it turned out Ian was very good on the set. He also swiftly memorised the narration text and learned to dance Oberek (Polish regional dance). There were slight mishaps on both sides but that’s how it goes when you work on something big for the very first time. I remember Ian had some objections when it comes to the script itself, because it wasn’t written in the language he would have liked. Ian always paid attention to the English language. I remember him joking: ‘If my English teacher heard this and not the other phrase, I would have my hands treated with a ruler.’ That’s the way it was both in Polish and English school back in the day. As you can see the old methodology of teaching is still preserved nowadays. We didn’t always keep up with Ian. The fact the script needed stylistic reworking was actually a waste of time. But I think those two were the only elements that shattered the harmony of shooting the film a bit – ‘shattered’ is not the best, I’d say they made the work a little difficult. I don’t know if we should say this to people, but on the other hand I think it’s our common experience – Ian’s and mine. Looking at things in a different way, the atmosphere in places where Chopin actually was, was very inspiring to Ian. I think it was for the better. When you’re in places where Chopin was…

And you see what’s going on around you…

And you see what’s going on around you, you can see the surroudnings, architecture, scenery, folklor you’re yield to inspiration. Your imagination opens up and everything works better then.
Tell me how Ian reacted when he got to know about the project?
I haven’t got a clue really. I sent my promotional film entitled ‘Fryderyk 2010’ to Ian. Roman was involved in that, and he said Ian really liked the film and that he would like to work with us. I was really surprised that in our times, where everything is in a constant rush, and people are overwhelmed with their daily routines we got the swift answer from people who are well known. It was a great, optimistic feeling – Ian saw my film and liked it but first and foremost he wanted to do the narration.

When seeing Ian in new role for him what will the old fans experience?

Some kind of Ian’s universality as a human being. The man who is mature, shaped by life and has had a lot of experience and considerable knowledge. I remember being young and all the older people, especially the parents, were saying rock was evil, and that it turned peoples’ grey matter to the left. It turns out rock musicians have proper education and immense life knowledge. It wasn’t what they were trying to talk into us back then. For instance, Brian May of Queen has a PhD in astronomy! All of the musicians are vastly characterised by positive divergence from the musicians of today, presenters or DJ’s. I’m positively surprised by this fact and we have acheived what we wanted to in the first place.

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Deep Purple (Overseas) continue their expansion into the digital world with a republishing of the original Sunbury ’75 event program on the Kindle format.

The Sunbury Rock Festival was an annual Australian rock music festival held on
a 620-acre private farm between Sunbury and Diggers Rest, Victoria, which was
staged on the Australia Day (26 January) long weekend from 1972 to 1975. It
attracted up to 45,000 patrons and was promoted by Odessa Promotion as
Australia’s Woodstock. The Sunbury Pop Festivals signalled the end of the
hippie peace movement of the late 1960s and the beginning of the reign of pub
rock. In 1975 Deep Purple were head-liners.

Also due soon are reproductions of the Rainbow 1976 and 1978 tours…..

more details here

with thanks to Dr Drew Thompson

Ian Gillan was recently interviewed by The Express and Star newspaper about the upcoming Deep Purple tour in the UK.

For a man with no ambition he seems to have achieved rather a lot and there is no sign of that stopping any time soon, with Deep Purple and their 38-piece orchestra descending on Birmingham’s LG Arena on Sunday, November 27, 2011, on their ‘The Songs That Built Rock’ tour.

Gillan winces at the name of the tour: “Don’t get me into that. The title of the tour, well it’s a marketing thing. It just seems a little trite to me but I guess you’ve got to name it something.”

With a history over four decades and counting, it’s not the first time that Deep Purple have worked with orchestras of course, most famously when performing former keyboard player Jon Lord’s Concerto For Group And Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969 at the Royal Albert Hall.

“Jon Lord with his orchestra composition, brought all of those elements. Ian Paice, big band swing, of course. Ritchie with his studio experience, rock and roll and all that sort of thing. I had my soul music and blues. So there’s a great deal of structure in these songs that lend themselves to different interpretations. This is a new interpretation for us and it’s very exciting.

Gillan continues: “The orchestra is very much integrated into the band. We don’t actually use them on every song. There are some songs where there’s no validity for having an orchestra, which makes it even more dynamically interesting during the show.

“It’s fantastic, when you hear something like Perfect Strangers, the orchestra gives such power to the riffs and to the structure of the song. And then you hear them swing like a train on songs like Lazy. It’s incredible, it’s quite an experience.

“It’s totally different to an ordinary Deep Purple show. It’s edgy, very edgy . . . with lots of mistakes!”

Read more about the upcoming tour and the plans (or not….) for a new record: http://www.expressandstar.com/entertainment/2011/10/25/deep-purple-and-orchestra-to-play-birmingham-lg-arena/

The official Deep Purple video channel has posted a brief interview with Colin Hart:

Colin’s new book A Hart Life is out (well, almost) on Wymer Publishing in the UK.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

Last week Jon Lord was working at the Abbey Road in London on the studio recording of the Concerto for group and orchestra with Paul Mann, Joe Bonamassa, Kasia Laska and Steve Balsamo.

Kasia Laska tweeted on October 14:

Just bought a ticket to London. Going to record Concerto For Group and Orchestra part next week. So happy!

And later, on October 20:

Oh,And guess who was there?Yes, Jon Lord.It was so great to see him again!

Bonamassa writes on Facebook:

Great day in London.. Thank you Scott at Classic Rock for the great hang and to the wonderful Jon Lord for allowing me to play guitar on his symphony today.. It was such an honor and a thrill for me.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov and Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

Teenage Cancer Trust is holding an eBay auction for a pair of tickets and backstage passes for any one of the four Deep Purple UK shows:

• Glasgow, November 26
• Birmingham, November 27
• Manchester, November 29
• London, November 30

The auction closes on October 23. The tickets and passes have been donated by Roger Glover.

Thanks to Lee Worrall for the info.