News Archive

Tim will be appearing at the Beautiful Days Festival, Escot Park, Ottery St Mary, Devon.

Tim will be performing in The Big Top (Stage 2) on Sunday 21 August 2011.

The line-up of comedians for ‘Scary Dave presents’ on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons in The Little Big Top (Stage 3) includes: Sol Bernstein, Dougie Dunlop, Debra Jane Appleby, Paddy Lennox, Bentley, Scott Denyer, Rich Allen and Nick Page.

Headline acts: BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE (original line-up), GOGOL BORDELLO (back by popular demand), CARTER USM (UK festival exclusive) and LEVELLERS will be on the main stages.

The full line-up and further information can be found at the Beautiful Days website.

Tickets are available from Seetickets and from other agencies listed listed here on the website.

Apparently the Sunday theme for Beautiful Days 2011 is SPOTS & POLKA DOTS!
Somebody better tell Tim to root out that bikini then…
If you plan to go dotty, let us know.

Updated to reflect that Tim will be performing in The Big Top (Stage 2) not the smaller Stage 3, as per the updated press release.

Well you asked for it and we didn’t want any ire in Ireland so Tim’s going to be heading to Dublin, for the first time since 2009, to do a couple of solo shows this October!

Tim Minchin Live
Vicar St, Dublin
Thursday 13th & Friday 14th October 2011
Tickets go on sale via Ticketmaster on Tuesday 31st May at 9am.

As well as his grand piano and apparel befitting a style guru, Tim will be joined onstage by his iconic dance moves, wildly teased hair, gently calmed eyebrows, natural aplomb and his enormous… sense of occasion.

Get ready Ireland!

Heads up!

Tim’ll be swimming [with a float] across the pond very shortly to do lots of gigs for you lovely lot.

As well as his grand piano and apparel befitting a style guru, Tim will be joined onstage by his iconic dance moves, wildly teased hair, gently calmed eyebrows, natural aplomb and his enormous… sense of occasion.

Irresistible huh?

So, there are still a few tickets available and although you can access all the links via the gigs page, here they are, all listed prettily below for your pleasure and clicking convenience:

Toronto
Friday 3rd of June 2011
Venue: The Winter Garden Theatre 
Tickets

Boston
Saturday 4th of June 2011
Wilbur Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts
Tickets

Chicago
Tuesday 14th, Wednesday 15th, Thursday 16th, Friday 17th, and Saturday 18th of June 2011
Venue: Lincoln Hall
Tickets

Los Angeles
Tuesday 21st and Tuesday 28th of June 2011
Venue: Largo at the Coronet
Tickets

Portland
Thursday 23rd of June 2011
Venue: The Aladdin Theatre
Tickets

Seattle
Friday 24th and Saturday 25th of June 2011
Venue: Neptune Theatre
Tickets

Austin
Friday 1st of July 2011
Venue: Paramount Theatre
Tickets

Anaheim
Saturday 2nd of July 2011
Venue: City National Grove of Anaheim
Tickets

Montreal
Thursday 28th, Friday 29th and Saturday 30th of July 2011
Venue: L’Astral
Tickets

Tip: If you have missed out on tickets to a show it is always worth checking with the venue for returns or last minute ticket releases.

Tim also has a few festival appearances in the US. Details of which can be found here.

Keep an eye on this site for more US gig announcements coming soon.

There have been a fair few questions asking whether there’ll be a DVD of Tim’s orchestra show, and now we can confirm that, yes, there will be!

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in London in April 2011 with the Heritage Orchestra, this DVD will be available to buy from both the UK and Australia.

Currently, no other information has been confirmed, despite what you might have seen elsewhere, but as soon as there’s any more news on it, we’ll be sure to let you know, so keep your eyes peeled for updates!

Chances are you’ll already know about the highly successful and much lauded Matilda The Musical, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years. Based on the Roald Dahl book, it was produced by the RSC and directed by Matthew Warchus, with Dennis Kelly writing the book and our own Tim Minchin providing the music and lyrics, and it ran at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from November last year, through to this January.

Now, if you’re anything like us, you’ll be wondering, that’s such a short run for such an amazing show, so will it be heading to the West End? Well, we told you at the end of March, that it will be, but now is the time to unleash the all-important and exciting details!

From the 18th of October 2011, Matilda The Musical will take up residence at the Cambridge Theatre in London!

Most of the adult cast from the Stratford-upon-Avon run will be reprising their roles, so if you missed it, you’ll still be able to see:

• Bertie Carvel as the terrifying Miss Trunchbull
• Paul Kaye as the weasely Mr Wormwood
• Lauren Ward as the sweet Miss Honey
• Josie Walker as the vociferous Mrs Wormwood
• Melanie Le Barrie as the kindly Mrs Phelps

Also staying on will be Marc Antolin, Verity Bentham, Michael Kent, Matthew Malthouse, Alastair Parker, Nick Searle and Emily Shaw.

The four children playing the star of the story, Matilda, are still being cast, as are the three groups of children will be taking turns playing her cheeky classmates and we’ll be sure to raise a fuss once they’re announced!

In addition to this, the creative team who brought you the Stratford-upon-Avon will be weaving their magic once again with this West End run!

So, here’s the bit you really want to know. How to get your hands on tickets!

The show will initially be booking up to, and including, the 12th February 2012 and tickets will be on sale on Saturday at 9am from the official Matilda website. Unless, of course, you’re an RSC Member, in which case, booking opens for you tomorrow at 9am!

And, after all that, if you’re after more information, head on over to the Matilda page to read about the show’s story so far and the plethora of four and five star reviews it received during its time in Stratford-upon-Avon!

Now, on top of all this thrilling news, comes yet more! You might need to take a minute or so to catch your breath first…

The soundtrack to this amazing musical (not that we’re biased) is finally being produced! Recorded with the original Stratford-upon-Avon cast, it’ll be released around August/September and is available for you to pre-order from The RSC shop right now!

Finally, as always, the best way to hear about Matilda news first, is to sign up to the RSC mailing list.

Phew! You’re free to have a lie down now after all that excitement.

Hey you swinging Texan cats! Do you fancy heading to a hip happening on 1st July 2011? If so, I know of just the thing for you guys!

On that very day, Tim will be performing in Austin, bringing his shagadelic mix of comedy, music, wild, untamed hair and unfeasibly tight jeans to the Paramount Theatre!

Tickets will be on general sale on Friday, from here, but we’ve got another groovy presale code that will let you buy your tickets now from a limited allocation! If you want to buy them now, this is link you need and the password is “reese”.

Were you in America or Australia last night and did you manage to catch Tim on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, given the late notices on Twitter and Facebook? Either way, it doesn’t matter as cbs have uploaded Tim’s section of the show to YouTube for your viewing pleasure!

You know that statistically correct love song he does? Well it’s that one, but arranged in a way that you’ve probably never heard before! It’s worth a peek for that alone and he does look rather suave as well, it has to be said.

Of course, this is all to promote the gigs that Tim’s got coming up over in the USA and Canada in the next few months. You can find the full details of all the confirmed ones over on the gigs page and there are more still to be announced, so keep checking back or keep up to date on Twitter and Facebook!

And the North American dates just keep on coming in!

First up, on July 2nd, Tim will be returning to California, this time to the City National Grove of Anaheim, in, erm, Anaheim. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at noon from Ticketmaster.

Secondly, after appearing at both Just For Laughs Chicago and Just For Laughs Toronto, Tim will be heading to Just For Laughs Montreal with quite a busy schedule!

He’ll be doing three solo shows on 28th, 29th and 30th July at L’Astral, as well as taking part in Modern Love: The Relationship Show at Place des Arts on 29th July and doing two shows with Bo Burnham for Amp’d at Club Soda, both on the 28th July. Phew! I hope someone’s going to be keeping him topped up on caffeine!

Tickets for the solo shows go on sale on Saturday at 10am, with the others being available to buy soon, from the Just For Laughs website.

Update: The Amp’d shows seem to have been taken down from the JFL website. We’ll update if and when they come back.

Like small festivals in the UK? Well, Tim is set to headline the comedy stage of the inaugural Apple Cart Festival in August!

The Apple Cart is a one day festival, which will take place on the 7th August, running from 10am to 11pm, at Victoria Park in London. Appearing alongside Tim on the Comedy Stage, will be Marcus Brigstocke, Jon Richardson, Kevin Eldon, Abandoman and more!

In addition to this rather good comedy line up, there will also be a magic stage, curated by members of The Magic Circle, and a music stage, headlined by Saint Etienne and also featuring Badly Drawn Boy, Magic Numbers alongside many others.

Early bird tickets for this happening are available now, for a measly £25, from the Apple Cart Festival website, where you can also view the complete lineups for all the stages!

Tim rocking out during his orchestra show, with Pete Clements on bass and Brad Webb on drums.

Tim: “Not only are Pete and Brad reasonably good-looking and quite competent on their respective musical instruments, but they have garnered the basic skills required to read and write words. So we thought we’d celebrate the final shows of our epic and wondrous orchestral spectacular by encouraging them to express themselves in prose on this here blog. Exciting.”

You can still catch Pete Clements and Brad Webb at the final three dates with Tim and The Heritage Orchestra in Glasgow, 8th May; Sheffield, 10th May and Liverpool, 11th May. Details and ticket links below or via the Gigs tab.

…..

“Hi there I’m Pete. I’m a Musician and Music Producer based in south London. I first started working with Tim as a sound engineer about four years ago, when he was planning his first uk tour. Luckily I was able to fool him into believing that I had some kind of talent and he has kept me involved in various different projects over the last few years. He first mentioned his idea to include an orchestra in his show about a year ago; first I obviously thought it was a totally mad idea but as with most things Tim, it has turned out to be a stroke of genius.

Tim (knowing my background and training in the world of classical music) also offered me the opportunity to orchestrate two of his songs which was a great honour. I have written several pieces for orchestra but never thought I would hear them played somewhere as grand as the Royal Albert Hall or the Sydney Opera House. As those of you who have seen the shows will know, the sound of a symphony orchestra blasting out ‘Rock n Roll Nerd’ is really an incredible experience, so you can only imagine how it feels to hear it for the first time having spent a couple of months hoping that what you have written would turn out to sound as massive in real life as it does in your head!!

It’s been a real blast playing these shows and such a shame that it is coming to an end. The Heritage Orchestra are an amazing bunch who really put their all into the shows and Brad is actually quite good at hitting things too. My only regret is not being able to persuade Tim that his accordion accompaniment to the waltz section of cheese should be included in the show; there really is nothing more stupid than seeing Mr Minchin prancing around a rehearsal studio speaking faux French with an accordion in his hand, pure genius!!”

*****

“Hello, my name is Brad. I am a professional drummer based in London. I’ve been playing with Tim since about September last year. I was a fan of Tim’s long before I played with him as I saw him perform in Edinburgh one of the first years he played there. Our paths crossed when we both played on the Jonathan Ross Show. I was playing with Jamie Cullum (as was Tom Richards, sax player in The Heritage Orchestra and orchestral arranger of ‘You Grew On Me’ and ‘Cont’) and we bumped into each other in the green room. I still remember the look of shock on Tim’s face when he first saw me, thinking how similar we looked**. Oddly, Jonathan Ross came bounding up to me when I arrived at BBC TV Centre and started effusively welcoming me. I was a bit shocked and flattered but hadn’t had the time to get off the phone whilst he was speaking to me. Shortly afterwards I realised he had thought I was Tim and later told the audience what a “rude little fucker” Jamie Cullum’s drummer was for not getting off the phone.

Playing with Tim has been a real treat and there have been some hilarious moments so far. One which springs to mind was during one of the arena warm-up gigs in a small venue in Cambridge. Tim decided that we would play a song that I had never played before. He ‘taught’ me the song in front of the audience and gave me some hand signals for cues which he then proceeded not to use. He was also trying to teach me backing vocal parts during the chorus and at one point shouted, “FUCKING SING, EMPLOYEE!”. Luckily, we’ve been a bit better rehearsed for the actual tour so I haven’t been on the spot again, though Minchin still loves to single me and Pete out for a bit of piss-taking. Rightly so, as his employees.

**Quite frankly, if both of us shaved our heads, me and Tim wouldn’t look very similar. For this reason, I am actually considering it……”

*****

LAST three Orchestra show dates:

Glasgow
Sunday 8th of May 2011
Venue: Clyde Auditorium

Box office: 0844 395 4000
Ticketmaster
Ticketsoup

Sheffield
Tuesday 10th of May 2011
Venue: Motorpoint Arena

Box office: 0114 2 56 56 56
Motorpoint Arena
Seetickets
Ticketmaster

Liverpool
Wednesday 11th of May 2011
Venue: Echo Arena

Box office: 0844 8000 400
Echo Arena
Seetickets
Ticketmaster

Backstage… other captions are available…

All photos by Rich Hardcastle.