David Gilmour Announces Rehearsal Concerts Ahead of 2024 Tour

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David Gilmour in 2024 (Photo: Anton Corbijn; used with permission)

David Gilmour has released Luck and Strange, his well-received new studio album, and first since 2015. Listen to several tracks below including “Between Two Points,” with a lead vocal by his daughter, Romany Gilmour. The legend has also shared a variety of rehearsal clips for both the album and fall tour. That includes one for “Wish You Were Here,” the title track from Pink Floyd’s 1975 album, where the legendary musician is joined by guitarist Ben Worsley, who’ll be the touring guitarist on the upcoming run of dates, his first since 2016. On September 11, 2024, Gilmour announced a pair of rehearsal concerts to take place on Sept. 20-21 at the Brighton Centre. Click here to register for access to purchase tickets at just £30 each.

The tour comprises 21 concerts in Rome, London, Los Angeles and New York, in late September and early October 2024, in support of Luck and Strange. Those were initially revealed on May 3 with the announcement of six performances at Royal Albert Hall. News of the shows in the other cities arrived in the weeks that followed. Luck and Strange was released on September 6 on Sony Music. Tickets for the tour are available here.

Watch David Gilmour and Ben Worsley play “Wish You Were Here” before an audience of one

“Dark and Velvet Nights,” was written by Gilmour and his wife, Polly Samson, and came from a poem she had written. Gilmour said, “The music sprang out one day. It was so exciting to have come across this groove. Polly had given me a beautiful poem for our wedding anniversary, which was sitting on the desk right next to me, so I picked it up and sang it on the track, to hear what it would sound like with words. I played it to Polly, and she said, ‘Lovely, great, I’ll need fiddle with it a bit.’ So she added a couple of verses, and there it was – very serendipitous.”

The album was released in a variety of formats and is available in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.

The album features eight new tracks along with a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers’ “Between Two Points,” with vocals sung by Gilmour’s daughter, Romany, who also plays harp. The song was shared on June 17.

Gilmour says, “I’ve had that song on my playlist since it was released. More recently I mentioned it to one or two people: I assumed that it had been a hit, but no one knew it. I asked Romany to give it a go.”

David Gilmour and Romany Gilmour

During the live streams that Gilmour and family, as the Von Trappeds, performed to a global audience during the lockdown, Romany sang and David found that their voices mixed in a way that only a family member could. Around that time, David and Romany collaborated on the song ‘Yes, I Have Ghosts’, which appears on the CD & Blu-Ray versions of Luck and Strange. [Listen to it below.] “I realized that Romany has exactly the right sort of vulnerability and youth for the song,” says David.

Listen to the beautiful “Sings”

On July 24, Gilmour shared a clip of the choir and orchestra rehearsing during the recording of the album. “Although they’re deliberately out of tune, they somehow seem to fit,” he noted.

In an electronic press kit of his Live at Pompeii album from 2017, Gilmour addressed the subject of whether he’d be touring. “I feel very uncomfortable heading off out and doing another tour without having made new music. There are several songs that are close to being complete which didn’t make it onto this album. I can’t see myself doing another tour without making another album first and that takes me a while. It took 10 years last time. I’m really hoping that, without making any promises, that it won’t take 10 years this time that I will get back in and start working again and following that I’ll be out again.”

From the original April 24 album announcement: Luck and Strange was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is the first Gilmour album of new material in nine years [2015’s Rattle That Lock]. The record was produced by Gilmour and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with ALT-J and Marika Hackman. Of this new working relationship, Gilmour, who turned 78 on March 6, says, “We invited Charlie to the house, so he came and listened to some demos, and said things like, ‘Well, why does there have to be a guitar solo there?’ and ‘Do they all fade out? Can’t some of them just end?’ He has a wonderful lack of knowledge or respect for this past of mine. He’s very direct and not in any way overawed, and I love that. That is just so good for me because the last thing you want is people just deferring to you.”

Gilmour shared the first track from the album, “The Piper’s Call,” featuring a blistering guitar solo, on April 25. [One of the CD’s two bonus tracks, “Yes, I Have Ghosts,” was released in 2020. Listen to the songs below.]

The majority of the album’s lyrics have been composed by Polly Samson, Gilmour’s wife, co-writer and collaborator for the past thirty years. Samson says of the lyrical themes covered on Luck and Strange, “It’s written from the point of view of being older; mortality is the constant.” Gilmour elaborates, “We spent a load of time during and after lockdown talking about and thinking about those kind of things.” Polly has also found the experience of working with Charlie Andrew liberating, “He wants to know what the songs are about, he wants everyone who’s playing on them to have the ideas that are in the lyric informing their playing. I have particularly loved it for that reason.”

Musicians contributing to the record include Guy Pratt and Tom Herbert on bass, Adam Betts, Steve Gadd and Steve DiStanislao on drums, Rob Gentry and Roger Eno on keyboards, with string and choral arrangements by Will Gardner. The title track also features the late Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, recorded in 2007 at a jam in a barn at Gilmour’s house.

Watch a brief album teaser

Some contributions emerged from the live streams that Gilmour and family performed to a global audience during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021; Romany Gilmour sings, plays the harp and appears on lead on the aforementioned “Between Two Points.” Gabriel Gilmour also sings backing vocals.

The album’s cover image, photographed and designed by Anton Corbijn, is inspired by a lyric written by Charlie Gilmour for the album’s final song “Scattered.” Of working with his family on Luck and Strange, David Gilmour says, “Polly and I have been writing together for over thirty years and the Von Trapped live streams showed the great blend of Romany’s voice and harp-playing and that led us into a feeling of discarding some of the past that I’d felt bound to and that I could throw those rules out and do whatever I felt like doing, and that has been such a joy.”

David Gilmour 2024 Tour (Tickets may be available here and here)
Sep 20 (evening) – 21 (matinee) – Brighton, UK – Brighton Centre (rehearsal performances)
Sep 27-28-29 – Rome, IT – Circo Massimo
Oct 1-2-3 – Rome, IT – Circo Massimo
Oct 9-10 – London, UK – Royal Albert Hall
Oct 11-12 – London, UK – Royal Albert Hall
Oct 14-15 – London, UK – Royal Albert Hall
Oct 25 – Los Angeles, CA – Intuit Dome
Oct 29-30-31 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl
Nov 4-5-6 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden
Nov 9-10 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden

Gilmour is guitarist, vocalist and writer with Pink Floyd, but is also renowned for his solo work. He and Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett met as children in Cambridge, U.K., and later began playing guitar together. In 1965 Barrett co-founded Pink Floyd, while Gilmour continued playing with a succession of his own bands. In 1968, he was asked to augment the Pink Floyd line up as the singer and guitarist, only for Barrett to leave the group five gigs later. Gilmour’s guitar playing, singing and songwriting became major factors of Pink Floyd’s worldwide success, including his distinctive vocals and guitar playing on 1973’s iconic album, The Dark Side Of The Moon.

David Gilmour Luck and Strange Track Listing
Black Cat
Luck and Strange
The Piper’s Call
A Single Spark
Vita Brevis
Between Two Points – with Romany Gilmour
Dark and Velvet Nights
Sings
Scattered