Presented by: Teg Dainty

The pop-jazz phenomenon makes its long-awaited return to live performance with a celebration of the new Roaring 20s travelling across the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

TEG Dainty is thrilled to announce that famed time-twisting musical collective Postmodern Jukebox are bringing The Grand Reopening Tour to theatre stages across the country in March 2022.

The five-date New Zealand tour will kick off in Auckland and then head to Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington before winding up in Tauranga.

Full dates below.

Early last year, pop-jazz phenomenon, Postmodern Jukebox, set out to celebrate a new-millennium Roaring 20s, promising audiences across New Zealand and the rest of the world "the most sensational '20s party this side of The Great Gatsby."

Well, we all know what happened next. Just seven dates into the Welcome to the Twenties 2.0 global tour, PMJ creator Scott Bradlee pulled the tour off the road and made the decision to postpone the remaining dates, many of them sold out, as a global pandemic took its toll, silencing live music for more than a year.

Now, the wait is finally over, and Postmodern Jukebox — the musical collective known for putting "pop music in a time machine" — is set to make the '20s roar again! The Grand Reopening Tour will see PMJ thrill audiences once more with their unique renditions of modern music's biggest hits in the classic styles of bygone eras.

After five wildly successful tours, New Zealand can’t get enough of Postmodern Jukebox, and the announcement of 2022 show dates will be very welcome news for their legion of diehard fans.

Scott Bradlee said today "Ever since our first trip Down Under in 2015, we've made New Zealand an annual stop on our tour itinerary and have gotten to meet some of the best audiences in the world, as a result. We have been so sad to miss a couple of years of this annual tradition due to the pandemic, but we're thrilled to announce that we'll be back better than ever in 2022 for our sixth tour. We have a lot of catching up to do! Bring your dancing shoes and let's get together to ring in the New 'Twenties, PMJ style."

As always with PMJ's dazzling live shows, The Grand Reopening Tour will feature an ensemble of multi-talented singers and musicians, bringing Bradlee's generation-spanning arrangements alive night after night. Surprise guests often join the core ensemble to make each concert unique and unpredictable, making for one of the most thrilling live music experiences of this (and any other) time period. MusicInsight.com put it quite simply in the Before Times: "Go see Postmodern Jukebox. Stop whatever you're doing, right now, and go see them!"

"I'm grateful to be able to create and collaborate with so many talented people and playing live to a theatre full of music fans is something that we've all really missed," says Bradlee. "We're fortunate to have so many incredible fans worldwide that have enabled PMJ to become a global touring act, and we're looking forward to bringing outstanding talent and classic sounds to every corner of the world once more. It's a Grand Reopening, but it's also a Grand Reunion — not just for our talented cast and crew, but also for PMJ and fans of classic, 'Old School' entertainment."

Over the past decade, Postmodern Jukebox has grown from a viral phenomenon into a worldwide juggernaut, amassing more than 5 million subscribers and 1.6 billion views on their YouTube channel. PMJ's growth has not been limited just to the digital world, with the outfit evolving from Bradlee's tiny apartment in Astoria, Queens, to a Los Angeles studio befitting the bandleader's increasingly ambitious vision.

Most recently, PMJ reimagined the beloved theme from Friends via the evolution of music styles throughout the 20th century — beginning in the Hot Jazz 1920s and climaxing in the 90s with a guest appearance by original "I'll Be There For You" performers, The Rembrandts.

Meanwhile, Concord Records has released two Essentials compilations featuring PMJ classics from American Idol alum Haley Reinhart's torch song rendition of Radiohead's "Creep" to actor-comedian Wayne Brady's Cab Calloway-inspired version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". In 2018, Bradlee told his incredible story in his memoir, Outside the Jukebox: How I Turned My Vintage Music Obsession Into My Dream Gig.

Since embarking on a touring career in 2014, PMJ has performed on bigger and bigger stages as they've traversed the globe, including memorable shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. As the Houston Press proclaimed, "Scott Bradlee's project has turned into a worldwide phenomenon in quite a small amount of time, having sold-out shows in more than 60 countries around the world — and rightly so."

For a band so deeply rooted in Jazz Age aesthetics — though their time warps have touched on virtually every major trend in popular music, from doo-wop to Motown to hair metal — the coming of another twenties was obviously a symbolic milestone. Ironically, the original Roaring 20s was itself ushered in by a worldwide flu pandemic.

"It's crazy how history repeats itself," Bradlee says, "and it's striking that people back then reported the same feelings — everybody was beyond tired of being cooped up by themselves after weathering a long pandemic. They just wanted to get out there and dance and party and see each other again. Music has served such a valuable function of inspiring us and reminding us of our shared humanity throughout history, and there's simply no substitute for gathering together to experience such a powerful force live."

POSTMODERN JUKEBOX: THE GRAND REOPENING TOUR

Tour Dates

Sunday 6 March – Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Auckland

Monday 7 March – Dunedin Town Hall, Dunedin

Tuesday 8 March – Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch

Thursday 10 March – Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 11 March – Addison Theatre, Tauranga

Tickets go on sale Friday 28 May, 10 am local time from www.tegdainty.com