The Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who is also a big Deep Purple fan, will tour with the Concerto For Group And Orchestra, symphony orchestra with more than 80 instrumentalists conducted by Paul Mann, who was a close friend of the late Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord. The band will also be formed by Kaltner Z Doka (Guitar), Bernhard Welz (Drums), John O’ Haras (Keyboards), Tanya O’Callaghan (Whitesnake) and Mario Argandonia (Percussion).
Until now only concerts in Brazil were announced for April 2023. Dickinson already performed with the Orchestra on several occasions over the years.
Concerto For Group And Orchestra featuring Bruce Dickinson 2023 tour dates:
April
- 15 – São Paulo, Brazil – Vibra São Paulo
- 19 – Curitiba, Brazil – Teatro Positivo
- 21 – Rio De Janeiro, Brazil – Vivo Rio
- 25 – Porto Alegre, Brazil – Auditório Araújo Vianna
Possible setlist
The setlist covers the career of the late keyboardist Jon Lord and the last show made by the group was in Hungary in 2021. So the setlist might be similar to that one that can be seen below.
Concerto for Group and Orchestra songs played
- First Movement: Moderato – Allegro
- Second Movement: Andante
- Third Movement: Vivace – Presto
Deep Purple and Jon Lord songs played:
- Sarabande
- Bourrée
- Difficult to Cure
- Wring That Neck
- Pictures of Home
- When a Blind Man Cries
- Perfect Strangers
- Hush
- Smoke on the Water
Bruce is a big fan of Deep Purple and in an interview with ABC back in 2018 he recalled when was the first time that he ever heard the group. “I was walking up and down the corridor at boarding school and I heard this racket coming from behind a door. I thought, ‘Oh my god, What is that?!’. So, I knocked on the door. This senior boy opened the door and looked at me with a big sneer on his face.”
“I asked, ‘Who was that?’. He went: ‘Oh, it’s Deep Purple if you must know. ‘Speed King’’ and shut the door. So that was that, I was hooked. We used to have little auctions in the boarding house. People would be short of money and wouldn’t have enough money to have enough to pay their bill at the school shop. So they’d auction their stuff off. LPs got auctioned quite regularly.”
“The second LP that I got was ‘Deep Purple In Rock‘. Scratched to bits. I paid 50 cents Australian for it. I loved it and played it absolutely to death. So I think I might have blown up my parents’ stereogram with it,” Bruce Dickinson said.