ABBA’s ‘Voyage’ Virtual Concert to Go on Tour ‘Around the World’
variety.comJem Aswad Senior Music Editor ABBA’s ‘Voyage’ virtual concert — which opened in a specially built London arena last May and has sold more than 1 million tickets — will go on a global tour, Universal Music Group chairman Lucian Grainge confirmed during the company’s earnings call on Thursday. “Plans are now in development to take ‘ABBA Voyage’ around the world,” Grainge said on the call.
Presumably, that means the show will be playing in specially modified arenas in major cities across the globe. Contacted by Variety, reps for ABBA and Universal, the group’s label, did not immediately have further information.
While details are slim and the news is not a shock, it is the first official confirmation that the show — a multi-multi-million-dollar project, nearly six years in the making, that saw George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic using motion-capture technology to create “ABBA-tars” of the group as they looked in 1979 playing a 90-minute concert of their most-loved songs — will play somewhere besides the London theater.
While technically not a hologram show, “Voyage” represents a new peak in that type of technology — the four bandmembers, who are now in their seventies, spent many hours performing for the motion-capture cameras to appear as lifelike as possible.
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