Celebrating David Bowie

A Hollywood room, four weeks on

The series started as something that was not meant to recur. On 8 February 2016, a month after Bowie's death, the Roxy Theatre on Sunset Strip staged a four-hour concert of his material played by friends, admirers and musicians who had worked in his bands. Seal, Gary Oldman and Ewan McGregor took part. Tickets went quickly, and the proceeds were directed to Max's Kansas City Kid's Project through the Florence Belsky Foundation. The organisers' own account of that night is blunt about its purpose: a room full of people who had just lost someone, playing the songs rather than talking about them.

The person who assembled it was Angelo Bundini, a Los Angeles guitarist and producer who works under the name Scrote. Between 2012 and 2015 he had been running the Interpreting Music Series, concerts built around the catalogue of one inventive songwriter and performed by a shifting cast of players rather than a fixed band. Celebrating David Bowie is that format aimed at a single name, and Bundini has remained its musical director and guitarist throughout.

From one night to seventeen countries

The repeat bookings came almost immediately. A San Francisco edition later in 2016 drew roughly 70 performers, among them Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, with money going to the TJ Martell Foundation. A London date sold its 5,000 capacity inside two hours. The Sydney Opera House took two nights, both sold out. By 2018 the production's own tally stood at 17 countries across five continents, taking in Europe, North America, South America, Japan, Mexico, Canada and Iceland, with a strand of the charitable income routed to arts teaching at the Brixton school Bowie attended.

The cast list accumulated over those years rather than settling. Sting, Simon Le Bon and members of Living Colour have appeared, as have players from across Bowie's working life: the pianist Mike Garson, who also served as compère on the early shows, the guitarists Earl Slick and Adrian Belew, and the singer Holly Palmer. The commitment to Bowie alumni is what separates the operation from a covers billing, and it is also the reason the line-up reads differently in every city.

One point of confusion is worth clearing up. Garson has for years fronted a separate touring tribute, A Bowie Celebration, built explicitly around Bowie's former band members. The two run in parallel and share personnel history but are different businesses; reviewing the Bundini show in Chicago in 2022, Illinois Entertainer set the pair side by side as competitors.

The house rules

Two principles have held since 2016. There are no pre-recorded tracks — everything heard is played on the night, which in the large all-star editions has meant a dozen musicians on the boards at once. And nobody plays Bowie. Vocals rotate between singers who keep their own voices and their own stage manner, so the evening works as a relay rather than an impersonation, with Bundini's band supplying the continuity.

The Chicago show at the Copernicus Center on 14 October 2022, reviewed the following day by Jeff Elbel for Illinois Entertainer, is a fair template. Thirty songs ran from 1969 to 2013. Belew, Todd Rundgren, Angelo Moore of Fishbone and Spacehog's Royston Langdon traded the microphone, with Ava Cherry — who sang on Bowie's mid-seventies records — guesting. Moore reappeared in a new costume almost every time he came back on, including a Scary Monsters clown outfit, a sparkling red suit and a harlequin-patterned yellow one, and at one point stood on the seats trading call-and-response lines with the people in them. Rundgren came out in silver. Angeline Saris played bass and Travis McNabb drums. The night finished with the band arm-in-arm for a singalong "Heroes". Elbel's verdict was that the show balanced deep cuts against the hits well enough to merit the comparison with Garson's rival tour.

Ten years, and a narrower lens

The anniversary run was deliberately small: three American dates in February 2026, at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix on the 15th, the Wiltern in Los Angeles on the 16th and the Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside on the 17th. Jesse Hughes of Eagles of Death Metal, Angelo Moore, Alex Greenwald of Phantom Planet and Bundini himself carried the singing, with Devo's Gerald V. Casale and the singer Lady Blackbird added in selected cities.

Bundini described the programme as leaning heavily on Bowie's early-seventies proto-punk years, the songwriter hits that followed and the later-seventies Berlin period, and the Los Angeles set bore that out. Setlist.fm's log of the Wiltern night lists close to thirty songs and includes "Cracked Actor", "Panic in Detroit", "Queen Bitch", "Diamond Dogs", "D.J." and "Stay" alongside "Starman", "Changes" and "Life on Mars?". The eighties were represented by "Blue Jean", "Modern Love" and "Let's Dance" and essentially stopped there. Stage time was logged at 8pm to 10.25pm — two and a half hours straight through, roughly half the length of the 2016 marathons.

Australia, November 2026

The current leg was announced in mid-March 2026, with a pre-sale on 18 March and general sale the following morning through Metropolis Touring. Five dates: the Triffid in Brisbane on 6 November, the Metro Theatre in Sydney on the 7th, the Gov in Adelaide on the 20th, Freo.Social in Fremantle on the 21st and 170 Russell in Melbourne on the 27th. The venues are clubs rather than concert halls, which is a marked step down in scale from the two Opera House nights of the series' first year and suggests a different commercial model — more dates, smaller rooms, no flown-in cast.

The singers are Australian: Jeff Martin of the Tea Party, Kav Temperley of Eskimo Joe and iOTA, the Sydney performer Sean Hape, whose stage work has included Bowie-styled roles. They share a full band for a billed 20-song programme drawn from the better-known end of the catalogue — "Space Oddity", "Changes", "Starman", "Life on Mars?", "Rebel Rebel", "Suffragette City", "Young Americans", "Heroes", "Ashes to Ashes", "Under Pressure", "Modern Love" and "Let's Dance" among them. That is a shorter and more direct set than the American anniversary shows, with none of the Berlin-era selection that Bundini singled out in February.

As of early November 2026 the Brisbane and Sydney dates are imminent and the three later shows remain on sale. Beyond Australia nothing is confirmed: the official site carries a 2027 announcement graphic but no dates, with bookings handled by Randy Salcedo at Sound Talent Group. After ten years the pattern is clear enough — the show reconstitutes itself around whoever is available in whichever territory it lands in.