Art Garfunkel

Forest Hills, and a partnership that started in the sixth grade

Garfunkel was born on 5 November 1941 in Forest Hills, Queens. He met Paul Simon in the sixth grade at PS 164, where the pair were cast in a school production of Alice in Wonderland. Between 1956 and 1962 they recorded as Tom & Jerry, cutting "Hey, Schoolgirl" in 1957 while still at school, and they reconvened under their own names in 1963.

What followed is among the most heavily documented catalogues in American popular music, and Garfunkel's part in it was the high, unhurried voice on top. Bridge over Troubled Water, released in 1970, closed the partnership at its commercial peak. The pair were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990; Garfunkel has eight Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The split was not clean and never quite finished. Simon and Garfunkel reunited repeatedly across five decades, most recently for a full show at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April 2010 and then, two months later, for a single performance of "Mrs Robinson" at an American Film Institute tribute to Mike Nichols. They have not sung together in public since.

The solo work, and the other careers

Garfunkel's solo records began with Angel Clare in 1973 and continued through Breakaway in 1975, Watermark in 1977 and Fate for Breakfast in 1979. He is one of the few American singers of his generation to have had two UK number ones under his own name — "I Only Have Eyes for You" and "Bright Eyes", the latter written for the animated film of Watership Down and still the song British audiences call for loudest.

Acting ran alongside the music early on. Nichols cast him in Catch-22 in 1970 and again in Carnal Knowledge in 1971, the second of which brought a Golden Globe nomination. He has also built a parallel reputation as a reader and a walker — he crossed America and then Europe on foot in stages over decades — and as a poet, material that has since found its way into the concerts themselves.

The lobster, and ten years of not knowing

In 2010 Garfunkel choked on a piece of lobster and developed vocal cord paresis. One cord was left stiffer and thicker than the other; the damage sat in his mid-range, the part of the voice that does the finessing rather than the shouting. He cancelled his touring plans and spent the next several years unsure whether the instrument was coming back.

It came back slowly. By 2014 he was telling interviewers his voice was 96 per cent recovered, and he began working again in small rooms before gradually rebuilding to proper tours. The In Close-Up run in 2019 was his last visit to Britain and the last time he played the Royal Albert Hall; the Glasgow date on that tour ran to 24 songs. The voice audiences hear now is not the 1970 voice, and he does not pretend otherwise — reviewers through the late 2010s tended to note that the tone had held up better than the range, helped by his having given up smoking.

Father and Son

Garfunkel's son, known professionally as Art Garfunkel Jr and born in 1990, had already charted twice in Germany with albums of Simon & Garfunkel covers, Wie Du and Evergreen. In 2024 the two released Father and Son, their first record together, a duets set built around covers including the Beatles' "Blackbird", Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time", the Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again" and "Vincent".

The reception was cool. The Arts Desk gave it two stars, calling it over-arranged and describing decent songs drowning under churning strings, with "Here Comes the Rain Again" the one track that worked; the verdict was that it was a record for completists. Garfunkel's own line on the collaboration was disarming — that his son is the better singer of the two. He described his contribution as supplying vocal material to be shaped afterwards, as long as the delivery kept its feel.

The record matters less as an album than as a piece of the live show, where the two now sing together and where the Everly Brothers material that shaped Garfunkel's harmony instincts in the 1950s gets an airing.

Where he stands in September 2026

The estrangement from Simon ended over lunch. Harper Simon, Paul's son, ran into Garfunkel in the corridor of the building they share and arranged a meeting at the Pierre hotel; Garfunkel described bursting into tears, then hugs, and recounted Simon telling him plainly that a 2015 Telegraph interview had felt like an attempt to wound. He gave that account in December 2024 and has since been careful not to promise a reunion, saying only that his soul is connected to Simon's and that nobody knows what the future holds.

In February 2026 he sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water" at Clive Davis's pre-Grammy gala in Beverly Hills. The world tour was announced on 7 April 2026, with member presales on 8 and 9 April and general sale on 10 April; the Royal Albert Hall date went on general sale on 17 April.

The most recent development is political rather than musical. In an interview with The Guardian published on 4 September 2026, ahead of the European leg, Garfunkel said he was not aboard with the direction of the United States and was thinking of leaving the country, citing the climate, rising sea levels, world hunger and American policy towards Venezuela. He added that Trump would not last forever, so there was reason to hope. The remarks were picked up widely over the following days, which is its own comment on how rarely he gives interviews now.

The 2026 itinerary

The tour is billed as What a Wonderful World, and it is a theatre tour rather than an arena one. The autumn run opens at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix on 29 September, then takes in the United Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles on 1 October, the Palladium in Carmel, Indiana on 5 October and the Fisher Theatre in Detroit on 10 October.

Europe follows immediately. When the tour was announced in April, London was the only British date; Watford Colosseum on 13 October, Manchester Opera House on 15 October and The Halls Wolverhampton on 17 October were added around it, and the Royal Albert Hall show on 19 October is now listed as sold out — his first Albert Hall appearance in seven years. The mainland dates are the Olympia in Paris on 21 October, tickets €74 to €195, and the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall in Hamburg on 24 October.

Back in the United States, Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia on 30 October is followed by the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown on 6 November, ACL Live at the Moody Theater in Austin on 9 November, and the Arcada and Des Plaines theatres in Illinois on 18 and 19 November. The tour then moves to Japan for five nights: ROHM Theatre Kyoto on 26 November, the Mie Culture Centre in Tsu on 27 November, Gunma Music Center in Takasaki on 29 November, Tokyo Garden Theater on 1 December and the Orix Theater in Osaka on 4 December.