Paul Simon's "The Quiet Celebration Concert" Live Album Is Out Today
The nearly two-hour live album, recorded in Seattle at the end of his first U.S. tour leg since 2018, arrives today on vinyl, CD, and streaming. It opens with the full 33-minute Seven Psalms.
Paul Simon is back in the record stores. The singer-songwriter released Paul Simon: The Quiet Celebration Concert on Friday, a nearly two-hour live album drawn from his first extended tour since 2018.
The album arrives as a 3-LP vinyl set, a 2-CD set, and on all digital and streaming platforms, via Owl Records and Legacy Recordings.
It opens with Seven Psalms. The 33-minute continuous piece came out as a studio record in 2023. Simon wrote and arranged it with a live performance in mind, and this is the first time the whole thing has appeared on a live release.
The rest of the set moves through his catalog. New arrangements of “Graceland,” “The Boxer,” “Slip Slidin’ Away,” and “The Sound of Silence” sit next to deep cuts like “St. Judy’s Comet,” “The Late, Great Johnny Ace,” and “Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War.” The lead single, a duet with his wife Edie Brickell on “Under African Skies,” has been streaming since September.
The tracks were captured at McCaw Hall in Seattle, near the close of the tour’s first U.S. leg. That 58-date run drew some of the warmest reviews of his career, with Rolling Stone calling the shows a victory lap for one of the great songwriters of the past century.
A comeback that wasn’t supposed to happen
Simon wrapped what was billed as a farewell tour in 2018. Then he lost most of the hearing in one ear, and for a musician of his precision, that looked like the end.
Instead, he found a new way to perform. In the concert film that accompanies the album — it debuted on Disney+ and Hulu in June — Simon says the setup let him hear his band again. “It’s enabled me to play with musicians again. I really missed it,” he says in the film. “Everybody has enjoyed the experience so much, there’s been a feeling of camaraderie and elation that we were playing this piece of music that we were really interested in, and that had a significant effect on me. It made for one of the most extraordinary tours I’ve done — maybe the most joyous.”
The Quiet Celebration tour played small rooms chosen for their acoustics, a sharp turn from the arenas of his farewell run. The album’s touring band includes longtime collaborators like drummer Steve Gadd and bassist Bakithi Kumalo. The physical editions come with packaging designed by Geoff Gans, photography by Jake Edwards, and complete lyrics for Seven Psalms.
