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Jethro Tull by Ian Anderson (UK)
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April 27, 20:00
Crocus City Hall 
 It was on the 2nd of February 1968 at the world-famous Marquee Club in Wardour Street that Jethro Tull first performed under that name. The group would go on to become one of the most successful and enduring bands of their era, selling over 60 million albums worldwide and entering the cultural collective consciousness along the way. To celebrate this golden anniversary, Ian Anderson will present 50 years of Jethro Tull in 50th Anniversary Tour. The debut album, This Was, was released later that same year. Founder, frontman and flautist, Ian Anderson, is rightly credited with introducing the flute to rock as a front line instrument, not to mention the codpiece! Jethro Tull are one of the biggest selling Progressive Rock artists of all time and their immense and diverse catalogue of work encompasses folk, blues, classical and heavy rock. The anniversary concerts will feature a broad mix of material, some of it focussing on the earlier formative period through to the “heavy hitters” of the Tull catalogue from the albums This Was, Stand Up, Benefit, Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Too Old To Rock And Roll: Too Young To Die, Songs From The Wood, Heavy Horses, Crest Of A Knave and even a touch of TAAB2 from 2012. Anderson is the only founding member involved with this tour. His current lineup includes guitarist Florian Opahle, bassist David Goodier, keyboardist and orchestral conductor John O'Hara and drummer Scott Hammond.
Early in 1968, a group of young British musicians, born from the ashes of various failed regional bands gathered together in hunger, destitution and modest optimism in Luton, to the north of London. With a common love of Blues and an appreciation, between them, of various other music forms, they started to win over a small but enthusiastic audience in the various pubs and clubs of Southern England. The breakthrough came when they were offered the Thursday night residency at London’s famous Marquee Club in Wardour Street, Soho. The early Jethro Tull released their first Blues-oriented album, This Was, in the latter part of 1968 before moving on to more home-grown and eclectic efforts in 1969 with Stand Up and a flurry of single releases, including Living In The Past, in the UK market.
Benefit, Aqualung, and Thick As A Brick followed and the band’s success grew internationally. Various band members came and went, but the charismatic front man and composer, flautist and singer Ian Anderson continued to lead the group through its various musical incarnations. Jethro Tull were, by the mid-seventies, one of the most successful live performing acts on the world stage, rivalling Zeppelin, Elton John and even the Rolling Stones. Surprising, really, for a group whose more sophisticated and evolved stylistic extravagance was far from the Pop and Rock norm of that era.
With now some 30-odd albums to their credit and sales totalling more than 50 million, the apparently uncommercial Tull have continued over the next three decades to travel near and far to fans across the world. After forty years at the bottom, at the top and various points in between, the Tull repertoire is still performed typically more than a hundred concerts each year by Ian Anderson on his continuing tours throughout the world. Ian remains at the centre of a group of sometimes changing but highly capable – indeed excellent – musicians. The line up for 2017/8 is: Ian Anderson - flute, vocals, acoustic guitar, Florian Ophale -
guitarist, Scott Hammond - drummer, John O’Hara on piano and accordion and vocals and David Goodier on bass guitar and vocals. The band continue to delight audiences everywhere and present the ongoing legacy of Tull’s music with its rich variety and depth of expression wherever the fans, young and old, want to hear Rock, Folk, Jazz and Classical-inspired music for grown-ups.
Ian Anderson, known throughout the world of rock music as the flute and voice behind the legendary Jethro Tull, celebrates his 49th year as a recording and performing musician in 2017. Ian was born in 1947 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. After attending primary school in Edinburgh, his family relocated to Blackpool in the north of England in 1959. Following a traditional Grammar school education, he moved on to Art college to study fine art before deciding on an attempt at a musical career.
Anderson has so far recorded seven diverse solo albums in his career: 1983’s “Walk Into Light”, the flute instrumental “Divinities” album for EMI’s Classical Music Division in 1995 which reached number one in the relevant Billboard chart, the acoustic collections of songs, “The Secret Language of Birds”, and “Rupi’s Dance”. In a more progressive rock context he recorded “Thick As A Brick 2” in 2012 and “Homo Erraticus” in 2014. Released in 2017, the classically inspired album “Jethro Tull – The String Quartets” with the Carducci Quartet reached number one in the Billboard Classical Charts.
In recent years, he has toured more and more under his own name in solo concerts with orchestras, string quartets, featured soloists and in his other eclectic acoustic shows. Concerts scheduled for 2017/8 will feature new work as well as the reprise of some surprise earlier Jethro Tull repertoire, unplayed for many years.
In 2006, he was awarded a Doctorate in Literature from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, the Ivor Award for International Achievement in Music and, in the New Years Honours List 2008, an MBE for services to music. In 2011, he received another Doctorate in Literature from Dundee University. Ian owns no fast car, never having taken a driving test, and has a wardrobe of singularly uninspiring and drab leisurewear. He still keeps a couple of off-road competition motorcycles, a few sporting guns and a saxophone which he promises never to play again. Tickets
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