Paul McCartney’s surprise Bowery Ballroom concert sells out in minutes
NEW YORK — Not all of Paul McCartney‘s fans were able to “come together” Tuesday night for his surprise show at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom — because the concert sold out within mere minutes of being announced.
The Beatles legend took to Instagram Tuesday morning to reveal he’d take the stage later that night in a show dubbed “Paul McCartney Rocks the Bowery.” Tickets were available on a “first come, first serve” basis through the venue’s box office, with only one ticket being sold per person.
Roughly an hour later, McCartney shared an update that tickets had already sold out and would not be available at the door, asking fans to “refrain from lining up at the venue tonight unless you have a ticket.”
CNN reported the inventory appeared to have sold out within 30 minutes.
The last time McCartney played the New York City area was in June 2022 for his ”Got Back Tour,” making a stop at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. During the show, Garden State native sons Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi surprised thousands of fans by joining McCartney onstage to celebrate his 80th birthday.
Tuesday’s gig was set to be a much more intimate affair for the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, considering the maximum capacity at the Bowery Ballroom is around 600.
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Harry Connick Jr. to premiere composition at Carnegie Hall for 100th anniversary of mother's birth
NEW YORK — Harry Connick Jr. will premiere a composition for the 100th anniversary of his mother's birth for Carnegie Hall's 2025-26 season, which celebrates the Declaration of Independence with a festival titled: “United in Sound: America at 250.”
Connick has tentatively titled the work “Elaboratio,” wanting to musically elaborate on his mother's life. He will play piano in the performance for his Carnegie main stage debut on May 22, 2026, exactly 100 years after the birth of Anita Frances Livingston. The program is to be repeated the following night.
His manager called Carnegie Hall executive director Clive Gillinson seven years ago to reserve the date.
“I just wanted to do something that I think would have made her proud and honor her memory by performing in a place that she always wanted me to play and to write something that’ll last forever in her honor,” Connick said during an interview after Wednesday's news conference.
Connick's mother died in 1981, when he was 13.
He is still composing the work, which will have three movements about each of the places she lived: New York; Nouaceur, Morocco; and New Orleans.
His only Carnegie appearance has been in the smaller Zankel Hall in 2005.
Carnegie's festival runs from January to July and will include at least 35 performances. Works by Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Philip Glass, Wynton Marsalis and Julia Wolfe are featured as well as underrepresented composers such as Amy Beach, Florence Price and William Dawson. Jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, hip-hop, Broadway and bluegrass are among the genres.
A March 2 concert starring J. Harrison Ghee and Betsy Wolf will feature “The Secret Life of the American Musical,” based on Jack Viertel's book on the making of Broadway shows.
Conductor Marin Alsop, pianist Lang Lang, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and violinist Maxim Vengerov will be the artists of Carnegie's Perspectives series. Arvo Pärt, who turns 90 in September, will hold the Debs Composer's Chair but will be not travel to New York because of his age, Gillinson said.
In the first of more than 170 concerts, conductor Daniel Harding leads opening night on Oct. 7 with alumni of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America and pianist Yuja Wang. The program includes Bernstein’s selections from symphonic dances from “West Side Story,” Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto No. 1 and Stravinsky’s “The Firebird Suite.”
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Meghan Markle's jam to reportedly be sold in Netflix department stores at U.S. megamalls
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Meghan Markle fans may finally be able to enjoy a taste of her luxury Montecito lifestyle, specifically her famous American Riviera Orchard strawberry jam that she teased nearly a year ago even though she didn't seem to have any products ready to sell.
A new Daily Mail report said that jars of Meghan's jam, as well as some of her other American Riviera Orchard food and lifestyle products, will be sold at new brick-and-mortar stores that Netflix is opening up in two megamalls in Pennsylvania and Dallas. The streaming service announced last June that it would be opening department store-sized “entertainment venues” called Netflix Houses in 2025, at the iconic shopping center in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and at the Galleria in Dallas.
The launch of Meghan's products in the Netflix Houses will coincide with the venue openings, as well as the release of her Netflix cooking show, “With Love, Meghan,” the source said. The show was supposed to begin airing on Jan. 15, but Meghan and Netflix decided to delay its release until March 4, due to the deadly Los Angeles wildfires, which swept through Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Pasadena. Meanwhile, this week Meghan is in British Columbia with her husband, Prince Harry, as he presides over the winter Invictus Games, the international sporting competition that he helped create for wounded veterans and servicemen and women.
“This is make or break for Meghan,” the source told the Daily Mail about launching her products in the Netflix stores. “Her new show is rolling out the same time as the Netflix stores open.”
Netflix announced that its Netflix Houses will let people indulge in “immersive experiences” related to their favorite Netflix shows. For example, people will be able to “waltz” to an orchestral cover of a Taylor Swift song on a replica of a “Bridgerton” set or compete in the Glass Bridge challenge from “Squid Games.” The venues also will sell “Stranger Things” merch, such a “that Hellfire Club T-shirt you've always wanted.”
The venues also will include cafés that serve food inspired by favorite shows, Netflix said. Presumably, the Duchess of Sussex's jam could be served or sold at the cafés, along with her olive oil, coffee or tea. Desserts or meals viewers see served on her show could perhaps also be on the café menus.
But how well Meghan's products sell at these Netflix locations could determine the American former TV actor's future with the streaming service or her success as an influencer and lifestyle guru, the source said.
“This will determine the future for Meghan as a businesswoman,” the Daily Mail source said. “Let's face it, she hasn't been that successful so far.”
Thus far, her commercial endeavors haven't fared too well, not since she and Harry left British royal life in 2020 and moved to the United States to pursue careers as media moguls and global do-gooders. They signed a reported $20 million deal with Spotify to produce uplifting, informative podcasts, but Meghan only manage to release one 12-episode series called “Archetypes.”
Their reported $100 million deal with Netflix initially turned out to be more successful, with the blockbuster ratings for their 2022 “Harry and Meghan” docuseries. But critics said viewers only watched because they wanted to hear the couple dish dirt about royal life and Harry's famous relatives. Their subsequent Netflix projects, which featured no royal gossip, barely registered or were critically savaged, notably their recent docuseries “Polo,” about Harry's rich polo-playing friends.
Meghan's cooking show, “With Love, Meghan,” reportedly got little mention at Netflix's star-studded event in Los Angeles in late January to announce the service's 2025 programming. Vanity Fair also had just published a lengthy and damning story about Meghan and Harry's “American Hustle,” which, among other things, portrayed Meghan as bullying her subordinates at Spotify and Netflix.
Comedian John Mulaney also got in a dig at Meghan and Harry's content creator aspirations when he talked about his own upcoming talk show, “Everybody's Live with John Mulaney” and its vague premise of having a panel of eclectic guests sit in front of a camera and engage in a freewheeling conversion.
Mulaney praised Netflix for believing in his show. “This is a really fun experiment,” he added. “Not since Harry and Meghan has Netflix given more money to someone without a specific plan.”
Mulaney, of course, was referring to Netflix famously signing a splashy, five-year deal with Meghan and Harry to make documentaries, feature films, scripted shows and children's programming. Netflix made this deal with the Sussexes, despite the fact they had zero experience in developing or producing movies or TV shows.
So now, Netflix is waiting to see if Meghan's lifestyle show succeeds, though sources suggest that the show won't include any actual recipes, the Daily Beast reported. Instead, it offers a “magical and beautiful guide to hosting and entertaining,” with Meghan entertaining her celebrity friends.
As for Meghan's lifestyle brand, Netflix's reported willingness to begin selling her products at its mall stores raises the question of whether American Riviera Orchard has already cleared some of the trademark hurdles that have reportedly delayed the brand's launch. The Daily Mail report didn't address the issues the brand has had with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As recently as November, Meghan's brand was hit with a “protest” from Harry and David, the famed Southern Oregon gift-box company, which said that the name American Riviera Orchard was too similar to the trademark given to their “Royal Riviera” brand of pears that it grows and sells during the holidays.
From combined wire services