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Ed O'Brien sells out the Barbican on his first tour under his own name
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Photo: Raph_PH · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsEd O'Brien's night at the Barbican in London on 16 October sold out in less than a day after tickets went on sale on 2 April. It closes An Evening With... Blue Morpho, the seven concerts he announced on 1 April, which open in Amsterdam on 4 October. It is the first tour under his own name.
The band will not try to recreate the record as it sounds in the studio. O'Brien is at the centre of each night. The musicians, all of them from the album's sessions, have taken Sly and the Family Stone, Miles Davis and Phish as their models, so no two shows are meant to sound alike. Dave Okumu, who fronts The Invisible, is the musical director, and the south London singer ESKA is among the players.
An Evening With... Blue Morpho, October 2026
| Date | City | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday 4 October | Amsterdam | Royal Theatre Carré |
| Tuesday 6 October | Milan | Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber |
| Thursday 8 October | Paris | Salle Pleyel |
| Saturday 10 October | Berlin | Admiralspalast |
| Monday 12 October | Hamburg | Laeiszhalle |
| Wednesday 14 October | Groningen | Oosterpoort Main Hall |
| Friday 16 October | London | Barbican (sold out) |
The tour follows Blue Morpho, his second solo album and the first released as Ed O'Brien. Paul Epworth produced it, and it is due on Transgressive on 22 May. A short film, Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play, had its premiere at SXSW in Austin on 16 March, and O'Brien has already set out a plan for Radiohead to tour again from 2027.
Until now his only solo shows were four club dates as EOB, in Toronto, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles in February 2020. The bigger tour for Earth, released that April, was called off because of the pandemic.