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Madonna news - Oct. 2015
← Sep. 2015 | Nov. 2015 →
Additional show announced for Tokyo
Source: Madonna.com - 14 October 2015
As expected, an additional show has been added for Tokyo on February 14th. Pre-sales will start tomorrow at 10am JST; general sales start on October 31st at 10am JST.
Given that the tour schedule is now pretty much filled up, this is probably the last show to be added. It brings the total number of shows for the Rebel Heart Tour to 81 shows. It visits 22 different countries in 4 continents over the course of 7 months.
Tokyo show sells out in 6 minutes
10 October 2015 
According to Japanese press, tickets for Madonna's concert in Tokyo sold out within 6 minutes after going on sale this morning.
It's expected that a second show will be added for February 14th.
Meanwhile, Madonna.com has added info for the ticket sales of Macau. Pre-sales and VIP package sales for the shows on February 20th and 21st will begin tomorrow at 10am CST. General sales start October 16th.
On October 17th, the tickets for the second show in Bangkok will go on sale as well. There are still tickets available for both shows in Taipei.
Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour: $20 Million Earned & Counting...
Source: Billboard - 10 October 2015 
The first box office totals are in for Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour that launched on Sept. 9. With the first 10 performances reported to Billboard by promoter Live Nation Global Touring, the tour's total gross stands at $20 million, based on 132,769 sold tickets from the first eight arenas on the schedule.
Highlights include the tour opener in Montreal with sellout crowds on two nights and a gross of $3.4 million to kick off the tour's six-month run. Washington, D.C.'s Verizon Center hosted the first U.S. performance with a packed house of 13,271 on Sept. 12. Two shows at New York City's Madison Square Garden produced the top gross so far with a $5.2 million take from 28,371 sold seats on Sept. 16 and 17. A second Canadian performance on Sept. 21 occurred at a new venue, the 18,000-seat Centre Vidéotron in Quebec City that opened just 13 days earlier.
The Rebel Heart Tour's opening leg in the U.S. and Canada will hit 20 arenas before wrapping in San Diego on Oct. 29 after a seven-week span. The following week, the tour heads to Europe for shows booked in 11 countries through December 20. Then during the first quarter of 2016, the tour will resume after the holidays with treks in three continents: a second North American run in January, Asia in February and a final Oceania jaunt in March.
Madonna's last stint on the road, the MDNA Tour, topped $305 million in box office revenue in 2012, earning her the No. 1 ranking on Billboard's Top 25 tours chart that year. Her highest-grossing tour on record is 2008-2009's Sticky & Sweet that reached $408 million in sales, landing at No. 5 among the top-grossing tours of all time.
Madonna attends late-night Prince concert at Paisley Park
Source: Rolling Stone - 10 October 2015
Two musical titans collided in Minnesota late Thursday night as Madonna attended an intimate Paisley Park jam session hosted by Prince. Minnesota public radio station the Current reports that Madonna and her entire touring crew – having performed at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center earlier in the night – ventured to Prince's nearby Chanhassen, Minnesota complex to watch the rocker and his backing band 3rd Eye Girl deliver a late-night gig.
According to the Current, a handpicked group of roughly 30 people were notified earlier in the night that something "extra-special" might go down, and by 1:30 a.m., Madonna and her crew began disembarking tour buses. Before Prince took the stage, Madonna's dancers turned the sparsely packed Paisley Park venue into a synchronized dance party. At 2:15 a.m. local time, Prince, accompanied by Madonna, finally made his way onstage. However, Madonna took her spot in a roped-off VIP section to watch Prince perform.
Prince's short set featured new track "Stare," three Hit N Run Phase One tracks ("X's Face," "1000 Xs & Os," "Ain't About to Stop"), an extended cover of Bill Withers' "Use Me" and renditions of the title tracks from Guitar and Sign o' the Times. At one point during the show, Madonna and Prince briefly "whispered something back and forth" before Madonna and her touring crew left the building. While the Current's account of the evening ends at 3 a.m., Prince reportedly played two more after-hours sets, even inviting the remaining fans onstage.
Sadly, the evening did not feature a duet of "Love Song," Prince and Madonna's Like a Prayer collaboration. In 2011, the years-long, much-publicized feud between the two icons came to an end after Madonna was spotted at Prince's Madison Square Garden in New York. The pair briefly dated in 1985, but snippy comments made in the ensuing years caused a rift between the artists.
Madonna at one point called Prince "a little troll," adding in a 1994 interview that while on a date with Purple Rain singer, "He was just sipping tea, very daintily. I have this theory about people who don't eat. They annoy me." Over a dozen years later, at a 2007 London concert, Prince joked, "I got so many hits y'all can't handle me. I got more hits than Madonna's got kids."
Second Hong Kong concert again sells out in 30 minutes
Source: South China Morning Post - 10 October 2015These shows are going to be spectacular, spokesman for organisers says after tickets for Material Girl's February 18 date run out despite prices of up to HK$11,888
All tickets for Madonna's second concert in Hong Kong on February 18 again sold out within 30 minutes of going on sale at 10am on Friday, in a repeat of the earlier rush for tickets for her first performance on February 17.
Concert organisers Live Nation Lushington (Hong Kong) said more than 20,000 tickets were put on sale for the shows at AsiaWorld-Arena. The concerts are believed to have sold out faster than any others in Hong Kong. Live Nation had initially scheduled only one performance by the 57-year-old singer, who will be making her Hong Kong debut 32 years after first taking to the stage.
Fans were obviously not deterred by high prices. Tickets ranged in price from HK$688 for the cheapest seats to a whopping HK$11,888 for front-row seating. The most expensive package was the “Runway VIP Party Package”, which for HK$16,888 secures seating for two people alongside the Material Girl's runway.
After the second show sold out, a spokesman for Live Nation said: "We are extremely thrilled with the results. We would like to thank everyone for supporting the Queen of Pop. These shows are going to be spectacular."
On Wednesday a second Madonna concert was added in Bangkok for February 10 after all tickets to the initial February 9 show in the Thai capital sold out in less than an hour. The Bangkok shows will be staged at the city's 15,000-seat Impact Arena.
Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour began in Montreal, Quebec, on September 9 and will take in 64 cities before it wraps up in Brisbane on March 27, 2016. The tour follows the spring release of Madonna's Rebel Heart album, the singer's 13th studio album.
New tour support artists announced
Source: Madonna.com - 10 October 2015Madonna today announced that Montreal born producer and DJ Lunice will open the Rebel Heart Tour dates in Edmonton on October 11th and 12th at Rexall Place, and Las Vegas on October 24th at MGM Grand Garden Arena. A disciple of hip hop, Lunice is an international sensation - overthrowing the live arena everywhere he goes with his unique style and approach to music.
Additionally, Los Angeles-based DJ, producer and pop artist Michael Diamond will open more dates on the Rebel Heart Tour including San Jose on October 19th at SAP Center and Glendale on October 22nd at Gila River Arena. Diamond who is a producer on Madonna's heralded Rebel Heart album has already wrapped a support slot in five cities with the Material Girl including Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlantic City, and Toronto.
Madonna talks Rebel Heart Tour, why she wants to have tea with the pope
Source: Rolling Stone - 7 October 2015
It's three days before the Pope leads hundreds of thousands of people in a mass at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and four miles away at the Wells Fargo Center, one of America's most famous ex-Catholics is already getting into the spirit of the occasion. Madonna uses a giant cross as a stripping pole and writhes around on a re-creation of the Last Supper table as she moans, "Yeezus loves my pussy best." "Popey-wopey is on his way over," she says later in the show. "I think he's stalking me."
The gleefully blasphemous moment is one of 21 elaborately choreographed numbers on Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour, which has been packing North American arenas since it kicked off September 9th. It's her most extravagant stage show ever — a two-hour set that features samurai warriors, matadors, gypsies, rockabilly kids dancing around a body shop and a dangerous-looking dance routine on top of giant swaying poles, not to mention a grand finale set in a gleaming 1920s-style Paris cafe.
"The logistical avalanche of putting it together was unlike anything I've ever done," says Arianne Phillips, the head costume designer, who notes the tour uses 500 pairs of shoes and 450 costumes. "Every day of rehearsals felt like an impossibility." To prepare for the show, the 20 backup dancers spent three months putting in 14-hour days, six days a week. The 57-year-old Madonna was right beside them. "No matter what we asked her to do, like riding a nun like a surfboard, she'd try without flinching," says Megan Lawson, the tour's head choreographer.
The day after the Philadelphia show, Madonna phoned up Rolling Stone to talk about the tour.
At what point in the creation of Rebel Heart did you start brainstorming ideas for this tour?
Finishing my record was filled with panic and pressure because of all the leaks, so I wasn't really thinking about my live show until I released the record and started making videos and doing my promo show. So honestly, I didn't really try to sit down and get my head around it until last March. That's unusual for me because I usually start thinking way, way, way in advance.
When you did start plotting out the tour, what were your goals?
My goals are always the same. I want to take people on a journey. I like to explore themes. I believe that if you're going to a big venue like a sports arena or a stadium you need to present a kind of entertainment that interfaces with all of the senses.
I don't think it's enough to just stand onstage and sing. I think that there are moments for that, but I'm a very visual person. I was trained as a dancer, so those kinds of things are really important to me, in my shows, anyway.
I feel like when the audience walks into a show, they walk into a magical world, and they're transported for two hours to another time and place, and they plug into the matrix of my creative brain, which, generally, explores and expresses all of the things that I'm interested in, and/or inspired by. So that's always my goal. And of course, it changes and shifts from record to record, from tour cycle to tour cycle. The moods I'm in, the themes I want to express, all of that.
What are the primary themes of this tour?
The first message is empowerment, and we're using the song "Iconic" as the opening. It talks about being a warrior and fighting for what you believe in, and recognizing that we all have the ability to be iconic in our own ways — to be warriors, to shine. Also, I'm honored that I had Mike Tyson is in my song and video, because I really look up to him and admire him as a person who has gone through the roller coaster of life, who has walked through the fire, gone through the darkness. And for me, he's metamorphosed into a human being who is someone to look up to and be inspired by.
So, that would be the first theme. And "Devil Pray" is a song about being sucked into the illusion that alcohol and weed can give you insight into sort of the upper world, so to speak, or can make you closer to God. And in fact, they do. But I think in the end it's an illusion.
As I said, I don't just jump from subject to subject, so we have to go on a journey. We have to start out as warriors, and then we explore themes of sex and religion, because they are things in our society that are always separated. And, to me, sex is a sacred gift that was given to us. It's meant to be played with. I like to, obviously, provoke people with concepts of sex and religion's point of view about it. That's because I believe that people need to be challenged even if they disagree with me, which is fine. But I'm not gonna take you song-by-song. We'll be talking for two hours.
How about you just tell me your process for picking which older songs to put into the set list. That couldn't be easy.
That is really, really hard. Basically, I go through the catalog, which is a pretty long list of songs. And once I got an idea for the themes I want to explore, I break the show down into four sections, and then I try and find ways to interweave my old songs with the new, and generally that has to do with themes. So we try a lot of stuff out, and it doesn't work.
Then we try things that I never would have thought of and it does work. It's a very, very long process. That's, for me, the biggest challenge, to marry the old with the new. Because obviously those songs I wrote a long time ago, and I have to reinvent them to a certain extent so that they speak to me now versus the woman that I was 30 years ago.
I've always admired that about your concerts. It would be so easy to simply do your 15 biggest hits and stick to the original arrangements, but you've never once taken that easy route.
No. And I just couldn't do it, anyway. I just couldn't do it.
Can you explain why?
Because I've changed, and sonics have changed. The sound of a synth or an 808 [drum machine] ... everything has just changed so much. If you put the exact song next to something new, it just sounds so small and mono. You know what I mean? They just can't live together.
"True Blue" was a really great moment, stripping it down like that.
Yeah. I love performing that song and "La Vie En Rose." They're so much fun because there's something naive and sweet about singing a song on a ukulele.
Are you new to that instrument?
Oh, God, yes [laughs]. I suck at it, basically. The chord progressions are completely different than they are on a guitar, so it's not something I can play without thinking. But I have to constantly challenge myself. It's a challenge for my every night, because a G on a ukulele doesn't look like a G on a guitar. It's a little tricky. Gotta pay attention.
Tell me how you get in shape for a tour. You're doing that show over 80 times in the coming months. That's a lot to prepare for solely on a physical basis.
Yeah. This is true, although I have to say I haven't had as much time to train and prepare myself physically for this show as I have in the past with other shows. That's just because I have four kids, and they take up a lot of time. So I have to choose between working out and spending time with them, and then also putting my show together. I have to find the balance of training enough so that I'm not winded and out of breath when I'm onstage, but also not wearing myself out, and also seeing my kids. The list goes on and on.
Do you get something creatively out of doing a live show that you don't get out of making movies or recording an album?
Well, there's nothing like a live show, obviously. Living on the edge, being out, never knowing what's going to happen, it's a dangerous place to be. You make mistakes, you've got to with those mistakes. You know, each audience is different. I love when the audience is alive and plays with me, like it was in Brooklyn. People get my sense of humor and I can riff off of them, both musically and just conversationally.
When you do the same show every night, you have to build up your energy and get ready to be this life force and take the stadium or sports arena by storm. It's a lot of work. And then coming down afterward is a lot of work, so there's nothing like it.
For me, when you're onstage, there's no cheating. There's just no cheating. When you're in the studio you can do another take, you can fix things, you can re-tune your vocals. When you're making a film you can go into the edit suite, you can fix things in post-production. I mean, it's not live. A concert is just a whole different world.
"For me, when you're onstage, there's no cheating."
Do you see yourself still doing tours in 10 or 15 years?
I don't even think that far in advance, but if I did travel around and perform and connect to audiences, I'm sure it would look and feel different than, say, the extravagant sort of musicals that I put on right now.
Do you think you could enjoy a more stripped-down show that's just you and a small band, minus all the production?
I quite like the idea of just sitting on a stool with a bottle of wine, a guitar and working my stand-up comedy into the whole scenario. I like talking to audiences, telling stories. I think I could make an interesting show, to tell you the truth. I quite like the idea of doing something simple.
This is your sixth tour of the 2000s. Part of the challenge must be finding ways to top yourself since you've done so many different things.
I don't think of it as topping myself. It's like making a film, and then another film. You don't have to top yourself. It's just a different story I have to yell. I work with a lot of filmmakers and costume designers and choreographers and dancers, so it's always going to be different.
This crew of dancers was pretty amazing. It seemed like they were capable of anything.
Yeah, they're wonderful, super talented and unique. I always tell my dancers that they're actors, they're not dancers, and so much is going to be expected of them. I always say the word "intention." I don't just like waving my arm around for the sake of waving an arm around. Why are you doing this? What are you trying to say? So I think that's what makes my shows different.
It's a funny coincidence that the Pope and you are hitting cities just days apart this week.
[Laughs] It's hilarious, yes. I'm hoping that we run into each other.
You talked about him a lot at the show. Are you a fan?
I have a long relationship with the Pope, with the Vatican, with the Catholic Church, with my excommunication. Anyway, you know, I was raised a Catholic, and no matter what spiritual path I might go down, I always feel some kind of inexplicable connection with Catholicism. It kind of shows up in all of my work, as you may have noticed.
Are you happy with the direction this Pope is taking the church?
I'll state the obvious and say that he seems like he's a much more open-minded individual, who seems to be moving outside of the dogma of the Catholic Church that has been set in stone since the days of Constantine. So I think it's good.
It's good to look out into the big, wide world and see that we have changed, and at the end of the day the message of Jesus is to love your neighbor as yourself, and so that means not judging. And to do that, you have to be more open-minded and accepting of people who have lifestyles that you perceive as unconventional. So I think it's good, yeah. And I also believe that he's the kind of Pope you could sit down and have a cup of tea with, and/or that you could make a joke about something and he would laugh about it.
It's funny to think back to the Blond Ambition Tour when the Pope tried to stop your show in Rome from even happening.
Yes, he did do that. But times have changed so much then, in so many ways, and not just with the Pope.
Do you think he'd enjoy the show?
I do, actually, because at the end of the day, the message of my show is about love, and that's his message.
Billboard Boxscore: first 10 shows sold out
Source: Billboard Boxscore - 6 October 2015 
Billboard has reported the grosses of the first 10 shows of the Rebel Heart Tour, which are reportedly all sold out with an average attendance of 13,000 per night.
Montreal, QC: $3,420,984 - 2 shows - 26,468 attendance
Washington, DC: $2,014,706 - 1 show - 13,271 attendance
New York City, NY: $5,230,985 - 2 shows - 28,371 attendance
Brooklyn, NY: $2,789,910 - 1 show - 14,258 attendance
Quebec City, QC: $1,078,608 - 1 show - 13,051 attendance
Philadelphia, PA: $1,434,010 - 1 show - 10,544 attendance
Boston, MA: $1,941,750 - 1 show - 12,780 attendance
Chicago, IL: $2,522,365 - 1 show - 14,026 attendance
Bangkok tickets sold out, second show added
Source: ThaiTicketMajor - 6 October 2015
Following the immediate sell-out for Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour in Bangkok Presented by Singha Drinking Water, a second and final show – 10 February 2016 at Impact Arena, Muang Thong Thani has been confirmed by promoter Live Nation BEC-Tero. The additional show will go on sale to the public on Saturday 17 October at 10 AM.
The overwhelming demand for Madonna's first ever concert in Thailand has led to the announcement of a second show. The global pop icon's Bangkok dates for her Rebel Heart Tour are 9 and 10 February 2016 and no additional shows are possible. The Rebel Heart Tour will be Madonna's 10th world tour. It kicked off with 2 sold-out shows in Montreal, 2 sold-out shows in New York. Her tour is one of the most impressive and successful shows in the world. This will be the first time Thai fans will get to see and enjoy Madonna live in concert.
Tickets for Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour Bangkok Presented by Singha Drinking Water go on sale 17 October 2015 at 10 AM and will be available at ThaiTicketMajor outlets andwww.thaiticketmajor.com. Ticket prices are 2,000 / 3,000 / 5,000 / 7,000 / 12,000 / 14,000 / 16,000 Baht plus a limited number of special VIP packages: the Rebel Heart Package, the Runway Package and the Ultimate VIP Experience Package.
For purchases at distributor outlets on the pre-sale days, each customer will be restricted to purchase a maximum of four tickets. On public sale day (17 Oct.) each customer will be restricted to six tickets per person. And to ensure that fans who line up at the ticketing outlets have equal opportunity to secure tickets, we will be reserving zones exclusively for the ticket outlets, not available through the online access. Payment for customers purchasing tickets online on the public sale day can only be made via credit card.
For more information, please call 0-2262-3838 and follow us at www.bectero.com, www.facebook.com/bectero, @BEC_Tero_Ent on Twitter and BECTERO_ENTERTAINMENT on Instagram for more update news.
Madonna nominated for Songwriters Hall Of Fame induction
Source: ContactMusic - 6 October 2015Madonna, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, George Harrison And Gloria Estefan are among the musicians nominated for induction into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame.
Blondie, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Sly Stone, the Isley Brothers, and Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards will also compete for a spot in the Class of 2016 as performers, while Motown legend Berry Gordy, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds and pop songwriter Max Martin are among those who are eligible as non-performers.
Other notable names include Michael MCDonald, Steve Miller, Teddy Riley, Chip Taylor and Rod Temperton, who wrote Michael Jackson's smash hits Thriller and Off the Wall.
Hall of Fame members will cast their votes by 11 December (15) and the top seven picks will be announced early next year (16).
The 47th annual Induction and Awards Dinner will take place in New York city on 9 June, 2016.
The Class of 2015 featured Cyndi Lauper, Linda Perry, Toby Keith, late Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia and his collaborator Robert Hunter, country songwriter/producer Bobby Braddock and late blues star Willie Dixon.
More Tour Support Artists Confirmed
Source: Madonna.com - 2 October 2015Madonna today announced that Haitian-Canadian electronic musician, producer & DJ Kaytranada will open the Rebel Heart Tour dates in Detroit, MI on Thursday, October 1st at Joe Louis Arena and in Vancouver, BC on Wednesday, October 14th at Rogers Arena.
Additionally, Los Angeles-based DJ, producer and pop artist Michael Diamond will open more dates on the Rebel Heart Tour including Atlantic City, NJ; Toronto, ONT; St. Paul, MN; Portland, OR; Los Angeles and San Diego, CA. Diamond who is a producer on Madonna's heralded Rebel Heart album most recently wrapped a three city support slot with the Material Girl in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago.
Second date for Mexico City
Source: Live Nation - 1 October 2015While Madonna prepares to bring her Rebel Heart Tour to hometown Detroit, Live Nation continues to add shows.
As the demand for tickets for the first show in Mexico City was so high, a second show has been added on January 7th, 2016. Tickets will go on sale October 7th at 11am local time.
This brings the total number of Rebel Heart shows at 79 so far.
If the fast-selling shows in Taipei and Hong Kong are an indication, then additional shows in Bangkok and Tokyo seem a sure thing. General sale for Bangkok starts Saturday October 3rd, while Japanese fans can hunt for Tokyo tickets on October 10th.
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