phish upcoming tour

Phish Announce Summer 2023 Tour Dates, Including Seven Nights at Madison Square Garden

By Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

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After announcing an April 2023 West Coast tour,  Phish  have unveiled an extensive run of summer 2023 tour dates. Starting with a two-night stand in Huntsville, AL (July 11-12), the band will continue on for performances in Alpharetta, GA (July 14-16), Wilmington, NC (July 18-19), Burgettstown, PA (July 21-22), Syracuse, NY (July 23), Philadelphia, PA (July 25-26), and a seven-night run at New York City’s Madison Square Garden (July 28-August 5).

The band’s summer 2023 will cap with their traditional Labor Day Weekend run at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, CO, returning for four nights (August 31-September 3).

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Phish return next week to Mexico for the sixth installment of “Phish: Riviera Maya,” from February 23-26. The annual destination concert vacation will take place once again at the AAA Four Diamond-awarded Moon Palace Cancún in Riviera Maya, Cancún, Mexico.

Packages at the Moon Palace are currently sold out, however, a limited number of 4-Night rooms at Hilton Cancún for Phish: Riviera Maya guests are still available.

PHISH LIVE 2023

23 – Riviera Maya, Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún (SOLD OUT)

24 – Riviera Maya, Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún (SOLD OUT)

25 – Riviera Maya, Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún (SOLD OUT)

26 – Riviera Maya, Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún (SOLD OUT)

14 – Climate Pledge Arena – Seattle, WA

15 – Climate Pledge Arena – Seattle, WA

17 – Greek Theatre – Berkeley, CA (SOLD OUT)

19 – Greek Theatre – Berkeley, CA (SOLD OUT)

21 – Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles, CA

22 – Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles, CA

23 – Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles, CA

11 – Orion Amphitheater – Huntsville, AL

12 – Orion Amphitheater – Huntsville, AL

14 – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre – Alpharetta, GA

15 – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre – Alpharetta, GA

16 – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre – Alpharetta, GA

18 – Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park – Wilmington, NC

19 – Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park – Wilmington, NC

21 – The Pavilion at Star Lake – Burgettstown, PA

22 – The Pavilion at Star Lake – Burgettstown, PA

23 – St. Joseph’s Health Amphitheater at Lakeview – Syracuse, NY

25 – TD Pavilion at the Mann – Philadelphia, PA

26 – TD Pavilion at the Mann – Philadelphia, PA

28 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

29 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

30 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

1 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

2 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

4 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

5 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

31 – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park – Commerce City, CO

1 – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park – Commerce City, CO

2 – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park – Commerce City, CO

3 – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park – Commerce City, CO

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Phish Announces Summer & Fall 2021 Tourdates

At long last, through this unusual and ever-changing landscape, we are excited to announce a combined Summer + Fall 2021 tour. Thanks for your patience!

The tour will begin in Arkansas on July 28. Many of the 2021 dates that were rescheduled from 2020 will play on their currently scheduled dates. For most of the shows that are not newly announced, a limited quantity of tickets are available now via Phish Tickets as a real-time sale (while supplies last), as well as at public outlets such as Ticketmaster. A limited number of Travel Packages have been released for George, Lake Tahoe, and Commerce City show dates. In Atlantic City, Foundation Tickets as well as Travel Packages are now available here .

The West Coast shows that were originally in July have now been rescheduled for before Labor Day or late October. If you have purchased tickets from an authorized sales channel (Ticketmaster, Phish Tickets, CID or venue websites), you will have until June 10, 2021 to request a full refund if you cannot attend the new date(s). These ticketing partners will be contacting all buyers shortly with further instructions.

The Piedmont Park shows in Atlanta and the Giant Center shows in Hershey have been cancelled, and refunds will be automatic at the point of purchase. Ticketmaster and Phish Tickets will be contacting all buyers directly.

In their place, however, we are announcing new shows in Alpharetta and at Hersheypark Stadium plus a slew of new west coast dates that are part of a lead-up to a 4-day run in Las Vegas over Halloween. It will be Phish’s first return to Arizona since 2003, and the band’s first show in Sacramento since 1996! A ticket request period (note: it’s shorter than usual) for all of these newly-announced shows is currently underway at tickets.phish.com and will end on Monday, May 17 at 10AM ET. Tickets will go on sale to the public beginning Friday, May 21 at 10AM ET. Travel packages for Las Vegas go on sale Thursday, May 20, 1PM ET at cidentertainment.com/events/phish .

Specific ticketing information for each show is available at phish.com/tours .

Stay healthy and safe, and please get vaccinated if you haven’t already! We can’t wait to see you out there soon.

PHISH SUMMER / FALL 2021 TOURDATES

07/28 Walmart AMP, Rogers, AR 07/30 Oak Mountain Amphitheatre, Pelham, AL 07/31 Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, Alpharetta GA 08/01 Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, Alpharetta GA 08/03 Ascend Amphitheater, Nashville, TN 08/04 Ascend Amphitheater, Nashville, TN 08/06 Ruoff Music Center, Noblesville, IN 08/07 Ruoff Music Center, Noblesville, IN 08/08 Ruoff Music Center, Noblesville, IN 08/10 Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey, PA 08/11 Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey, PA 08/13 Atlantic City Beach, Atlantic City, NJ 08/14 Atlantic City Beach, Atlantic City, NJ 08/15 Atlantic City Beach, Atlantic City, NJ 08/27 Gorge Amphitheatre, George, WA 08/28 Gorge Amphitheatre, George, WA 08/29 Gorge Amphitheatre, George, WA 08/31 Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys, Stateline, NV 09/01 Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys, Stateline, NV 09/03 DICK’S Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO 09/04 DICK’S Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO 09/05 DICK’S Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO 10/15 Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA 10/16 Chase Center, San Francisco, CA 10/17 Chase Center, San Francisco, CA 10/19 Matthew Knight Arena, Eugene, OR 10/20 Matthew Knight Arena, Eugene, OR 10/22 Ak-Chin Pavilion, Phoenix, AZ 10/23 North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, Chula Vista, CA 10/24 The Forum, Inglewood, CA 10/26 Santa Barbara Bowl, Santa Barbara, CA 10/28 MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, NV 10/29 MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, NV 10/30 MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, NV 10/31 MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, NV

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Phish tour dates 2024

Phish is currently touring across 1 country and has 30 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at Sphere in Las Vegas, after that they'll be at Sphere again in Las Vegas.

Currently touring across

Upcoming concerts (30) See nearest concert

The Double E: T Rex Theater

Xfinity Center

Mohegan Sun Arena

Alpine Valley Music Theatre

Chaifetz Arena

Ruoff Music Center

Van Andel Arena

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

Phish: Night #2

Phish: Night #3

The Woodlands, Dover International Speedway

Dick's Sporting Goods Park

The Libbey Bowl

Past concerts

Madison Square Garden

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Really amazing experience. It was my first time seeing them and it was incredible, much more of a community event than a concert.

The light show was fantastic, the band fully in sync with the vibe of the crowd, the music, the entire experience.

I will definitely see them again!

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The first show I saw was 19 years ago and a LOT has changed! Like a fine wine, Phish defies the aging process to the extreme and is now tighter than ever before! They make you just wanna crawl up into the sound as the Earth shattering vibrations tattoo your soul for all eternity. With a twist of lemons.

Phish is a band everyone must see live!! It is always the best time. Of you want to see something awesome... See phish! You'll never be disappointed. The whole experience... That vibe, the sound, the lights... Pretty amazing combination. If you have not checked them out you definitely should!!!

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Phish Announce Summer 2023 Tour Dates, Including Seven Nights at Madison Square Garden

The post Phish Announce Summer 2023 Tour Dates, Including Seven Nights at Madison Square Garden appeared first on Consequence .

As per tradition, Phish will spend the summer on the road, playing all of their usual haunts.

The 20-date run kicks off Orion Amphitheate in Huntsville, Alabama on July 11th and 12th. Afterward, they’ll visit Ameris Bank Amphitheatre in Alpharetta, GA; Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park in Wilmington, NC;  The Pavilion at Star Lake in Burgettstown, PA; St. Joseph’s Health Amphitheater in Syracuse, NY; and TD Pavilion at the Mann in Philadelphia, PA. The tour culminates with a seven-night run (!) at Madison Square Garden in New York City and four shows at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado over Labor Day Weekend.

A ticket request period is currently underway at tickets.phish.com through Monday, February 27th at 12:00 pm. ET. Tickets will then on sale to the public beginning Friday, March 3rd at 10:00 a.m. via Ticketmaster .

Prior to their summer tour, Phish will play a string of west coast dates in April. Tickets to all of their upcoming shows can be found via Stubhub .

Editor’s Note: Head here for more details on how to get tickets to Phish’s 2023 Summer tour.

Phish 2023 Tour Dates: 02/23 – Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún 02/24 – Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún 02/25 – Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún 02/26 – Cancún, MX – Moon Palace Cancún 04/14 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena 04/15 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena 04/17 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre 04/18 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre 04/19 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre 04/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl 04/22 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl 04/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl 07/11 – Huntsville, AL @ Orion Amphitheater 07/12 – Huntsville, AL @ Orion Amphitheater 07/14 – Alpharetta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre 07/15 – Alpharetta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre 07/16 – Alpharetta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre 07/18 – Wilmington, NC @  Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park 07/19 – Wilmington, NC @  Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park 07/21 – Burgettstown, PA @ The Pavilion at Star Lake 07/23 – Burgettstown, PA @ The Pavilion at Star Lake 07/25 – Philadelphia, PA @ TD Pavilion at the Mann 07/26 – Philadelphia, PA @ TD Pavilion at the Mann 07/28 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 07/29 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 07/30 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 08/01 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 08/02 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 08/04 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 08/05 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 08/31 – Commerce City, CO @ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park 09/01 – Commerce City, CO @ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park 09/02 – Commerce City, CO @ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park 09/03 – Commerce City, CO @ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park

Phish Announce Summer 2023 Tour Dates, Including Seven Nights at Madison Square Garden Alex Young

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Published: 2024/02/27

Phish Announce 2024 Summer Tour

Photo by Peter Wallace

Phish have confirmed their 2024 summer tour. The Vermont Quartet will kick things off with their first three-night run at Mansfield, MA’s Xfinity Center, a favorite haunt since it was known as Great Woods, from July 19-21. From there, the group will make stops at Uncasville, CT’s Mohegan Sun Arena (7/23-24), East Troy, WI’s Alpine Valley Music Theatre (7/26-28), Noblesville, IN’s Ruoff Music Center (8/2-4), Grand Rapids, MI’s Van Andel Arena (8/6-7) and Bethel, NY’s Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (8/9-11). The outing will come to a close with Phish’s first festival since 2015, Mondegreen, which is slated to take place at The Woodlands in Dover, DE from August 15-18. (It is also Phish’s first show in Delaware since 1994.) Soon after, the group will make their annual appearance at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, CO.

Building on a recent trend, all of Phish’s summer appearances will be multi-night runs. 

A ticket request period is currently underway at https://tickets.phish.com , ending Monday, March 11 at Noon ET. Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning Friday, March 15 at 10AM ET. Specific ticketing information for each show is available at https://phish.com/tours .

Travel packages will be available for Bethel and Commerce City and go on sale this Wednesday, February 28 at 1PM local time.

The group wrapped up a four-show stand in Mexico this past weekend. They will make their debut at Las Vegas’ Sphere on April 18.

Here’s a look at Phish’s summer 2024 dates 

SUMMER TOUR 2024

July 19, 20, 21 Xfinity Center, Mansfield, MA July 23, 24 Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT July 26, 27, 28 Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI July 30, 31 Chaifetz Arena, St. Louis, MO August 2, 3, 4 Ruoff Music Center, Noblesville, IN August 6, 7 Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids, MI August 9, 10, 11 Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel, NY August 15, 16, 17, 18 Mondegreen, The Woodlands, Dover, DE August 29, 30, 31, Sept 1 Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO

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Phish Set for Four-Night Show at the Las Vegas Sphere

Phish added four dates at the Las Vegas Sphere—though they’re already sold out. The dates start April 18 to April 21 and each show at the Sphere will feature a completely different set list.

In collaboration with Sphere’s audio engineers, Phish has designed an immersive sound mix and spatial audio environment that flexes the capabilities of the Sphere’s speaker system . Phish and creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes will harness the world’s highest resolution LED screen with a visual show that responds and reacts to the band’s spontaneous musical cues.

Phish will follow the Sphere run with a summer tour that starts in July and concludes on Labor Day Weekend in Colorado. The band will also host Mondegreen , a four-day festival set for August 15-18 at The Woodlands in Dover, DE. This will be the band’s 11th self-produced festival and first in nine years, with Phish performing each night. The fest will also feature an array of interactive fan experiences, specially curated regional food and drink, art installations, and much more.

Phish Upcoming Tour Dates

• 18 | Las Vegas, NV — The Sphere
• 19 | Las Vegas, NV — The Sphere
• 20 | Las Vegas, NV — The Sphere
• 21 | Las Vegas, NV — The Sphere
• 19 | Mansfield, MA — Xfinity Center
• 20 | Mansfield, MA — Xfinity Center
• 21 | Mansfield, MA — Xfinity Center
• 23 | Uncasville, CT — Mohegan Sun Arena
• 24 | Uncasville, CT — Mohegan Sun Arena
• 26 | East Troy, WI — Alpine Music Valley Music Theatre
• 27 | East Troy, WI — Alpine Music Valley Music Theatre
• 28 | East Troy, WI — Alpine Music Valley Music Theatre
• 30 | St. Louis, MO — Chaifetz Arena
• 31 | St. Louis, MO — Chaifetz Arena
• 02 | Noblesville, IN — Ruoff Music Center
• 03 | Noblesville, IN — Ruoff Music Center
• 04 | Noblesville, IN — Ruoff Music Center
• 06 | Grand Rapids, MI — Van Andel Arena
• 07 | Grand Rapids, MI — Van Andel Arena
• 09 | Bethel, NY — Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
• 10 | Bethel, NY — Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
• 11 | Bethel, NY — Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
• 15 | The Woodlands, Dover, DE — Mondegreen
• 16 | The Woodlands, Dover, DE — Mondegreen
• 17 | The Woodlands, Dover, DE — Mondegreen
• 18 | The Woodlands, Dover, DE — Mondegreen
• 29 | Commerce City, CO — Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
• 30 | Commerce City, CO — Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
• 31 | Commerce City, CO — Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
• 01 | Commerce City, CO — Dick’s Sporting Goods Park

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Q&A: Phish’s Trey Anastasio on playing the Sphere, and keeping the creativity going after 40 years

Phish is performing four unique shows inside the $2.3 billion Sphere in Las Vegas, becoming the first band to perform at the glitzy concert venue since U2 ended a 40-show residency in March. The band’s co-founder Trey Anastasio promises no repeated songs and new visuals each night — plus a theme for fans to figure out. He sat down with the AP’s Josh Cornfield to talk about how how the shows came together, pushing forward creatively — and what’s next for the group.

Trey Anastasio, guitarist and singer-songwriter of the band Phish, poses for a photograph during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)

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Trey Anastasio, guitarist and singer-songwriter of the band Phish, gestures during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)

Abigail Rosen Holmes, show director and co-creative director for the band Phish’s upcoming show at the Sphere, poses for a photograph during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)

Page McConnell, keyboardist for the band Phish, poses for a photograph during an interview on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Phish has been performing for decades, but never has the band played the same show twice.

Over the 40 years since the band was formed at a Vermont college, Phish has amassed a reputation for its dedicated legion of fans and the dazzling light shows that accompany the improvisational jams. It follows, then, that the next stop for Phish is the new temple of immersive performances: the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Inaugurated with U2’s 40-show residency, the $2.3 billion arena will offer Phish fans something they’ve definitely never seen — or felt — before.

Mind-blowing visuals run up, down and across the floor-to-ceiling screen, designed to be manipulated in real-time during the band’s long jams. A sound system features more than 1,600 speakers, allowing for a Trey Anastasio guitar line in one spot and a line from Page McConnell’s keys in another. Seats make you feel like you’re inside every drum kick from Jon Fishman or bass bomb from Mike Gordon.

Starting Thursday, Phish will play four shows, with new visuals each night — and no repeated songs, of course. Anastasio, the band’s frontman, says fans will be able to discern a theme across the shows … and find lots of Easter eggs. The shows will be the first to be livestreamed from the Sphere as well on LivePhish.com .

“I love getting up in the morning and creatively thinking of another cool thing to blow people’s minds,” Anastasio says.

Anastasio talked to The Associated Press this week about the teamwork that goes into these shows, how their “giant rolling family” of fans keeps them going and whether there will ever be another Gamehendge .

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

AP: How much different is the Sphere, both from a sound and visual perspective?

ANASTASIO: It’s extremely unique to any venue that we’ve played before. One of the things that we’ve tried to do is sculpt our show so that we can be the band that we always are and play to our strengths while simultaneously using the technology to kind of expand the elements of the show — like the adventure and the breaking free of boundaries.

CENTRIA’s MetalWrap Series played a key role in enclosing The Sphere at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas.

AP: What has the planning process been like for these shows and were there things you decided not to use along the way?

ANASTASIO: Constantly. Daily. Yesterday. We dropped some things yesterday. It’s a constant process of waking up in the morning and looking for areas that we can improve. Everyone on the team is incredible, but the level of communication and proactive teamwork is hard to describe. And that’s what it takes to get something like this mounted. But yeah, there were ideas on what the thematic narrative that was going to run through the four nights that went on for a month. Then we landed on one. Then it was what songs we’re going to play, what the (visual) content was going to be, how literal we wanted to make it. The answer to that is not very literal. Our fans are really smart and really involved, and we wanted to take a night or so for people to figure out what we were doing, plant a lot of Easter eggs and things like that. But it’s a never-ending daily improvement.

AP: U2 played 40 shows here that were mostly the same set list and visuals. Why was it important for you that the four shows be unique?

ANASTASIO: We’re a very different band. We’ve never repeated a set and we didn’t want to start now. So we created four unique Sphere shows, top to bottom. There was a moment where we were discussing adding shows, because the tickets blew out pretty hard. And we decided as a team that they would be good, but not necessarily astounding — which is the level that we wanted to operate at — unless we just repeated the exact same show over again. The other thing is that Phish is such a wacky community that it kind of set up this scenario where a lot of people would probably want to come back. It’s just the way our fans are. It’s kind of like a big, giant rolling family or community or something like that.

AP: Have you always felt the same need to be creative and do new things, or has that changed as the band has kept going for four decades?

ANASTASIO: Always. Always. I just love the feeling of being part of a group, working on something creative, especially when it’s firing on all cylinders and people communicate well. It’s been one of the great joys of my life. That’s what a band is. A good band is a family. It’s a team. It’s communication and listening and it’s hard to describe what a joy it is when you spend almost a year working on — like what we did last year (with a New Year’s Eve performance of the band’s epic set of “Gamehendge” songs, complete with stage actors and puppets). It’s like you feel like you’re alive. And the Sphere has been like that, too.

AP: What role do the fans play in what you’re doing?

ANASTASIO: Huge. It’s everything. The fans and the community are everything. We have intelligent, focused fans and we have to honor that. You know, they’re not casual fans and that’s really cool. It’s an honor and it’s a massive responsibility. I feel like the longer this goes, the more we owe. The fans have supported us for 40 years — it’s our responsibility to keep raising the bar. Which is a great challenge. And it’s very unique. If you really look at the series of events that we continue to put on, that’s the thinking that goes behind it. You know, the fact that there were people in the audience last New Year’s Eve who have seen Phish 300 times, who were crying according to what I heard — and I was too, by the way — meant so much to all of us. It’s everything that we want. Which is to honor and respect the people that have been coming to see us for years. We feel like they’re family and they deserve our care and attention about every detail.

AP: So, will fans get to see another Gamehendge?

ANASTASIO: I don’t know, I actually don’t know. ... OK, first of all, I wanted to improve it. As soon as it was over I was like, “Oh, I know what I could have (changed).” So then I thought, “Oh, we should save all these props that are really — they’re really expensive.” But then it was kind of like, if there is, it’s going to be better, or it’s going to be built upon. Sort of the way this one was built upon. The previous one, even though it was 30 years ago. I hope it’s not 30 years. I’d like to do it. In the Phish world, it’s like the second it’s over … the next morning you wake up like I start working on the Sphere. Go meet (co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes) downtown at a coffee shop with a laptop and start riffing. I mean, I’m here in Vegas, and yesterday morning I was on a call (about this summer’s Mondegreen festival) with the coolest, smartest people who are working on that. Oh my God.

Phish Announces New Album ‘Evolve' Ahead of Las Vegas Sphere Dates

Phish is continuing an exciting year by announcing their upcoming 16th studio album, Evolve .

The band revealed that the album will be arriving on July 12 via JEMP Records, and also dropped the title track on all DSPs and streaming services on Thursday (April 11). The album will follow 2020's Sigma Oasis , which peaked at No. 16 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums chart.

The announcement comes just a week before Phish is set to play a four-show run at Las Vegas' eye-popping  Sphere  venue from April 18 to 21, 2024. "From the moment we first heard about Sphere and its potential, we've been dreaming up ways to bring our show to this breathtaking canvas," Trey Anastasio, Phish's guitarist and vocalist said in a statement at the time. "We're thrilled to present this completely unique experience to Phish fans."

The Sphere run will be followed by an extensive tour, which will kick off on July 19 in Mansfield, Mass., and stretch all the way until Sept. 1 in Commerce City, Colo. For more information on tickets and venues, check out Phish's website here.

Listen to "Evolve" below. Pre-order details for the album of the same name will be available in the coming weeks, according to Phish's Instagram announcement .

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Phish have announced their new album Evolve , out July 12 via JEMP Records. The record marks the band’s first studio album in over four years. They also shared the title track, a breezy summer jam that stretches just over four minutes. Check it out below.

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Next week, Phish will perform four sold-out nights at the Sphere in Las Vegas, kicking off on April 18. They’ll tour this summer, kicking off in Mansfield, Massachusetts, on July 19. The tour goes through August, with three nights at New York’s Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on Aug. 9. The trek will wrap with four shows in Commerce, Colorado on Aug. 29.

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Inside the Creative Direction for Phish’s Sphere Residency: ‘Trying to Design the Unpredictable’

The creative team for the band's four-night Las Vegas run, set for April 18-21, explain how to conceptualize an advanced sensory experience for a band whose signature is improvisation.

• By Eric Renner Brown

Eric Renner Brown

When Phish takes the stage at Sphere on Thursday to begin its four-night run at the cutting-edge new Las Vegas venue, it’ll do so armed with a bespoke production in keeping with its long history of head-turning concert innovation — which is why co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes ‘ sentiment on the eve of the shows initially seems counterintuitive.

Sphere Factor: Inside The Opening of Las Vegas’ Game-Changing Venue

“We’re pushing a lot of technical boundaries, and we’re doing a lot of things that are somewhat new … but never done for its own sake, all done very specifically to achieve what we want to do creatively,” the live music veteran says of her work with Phish, which follows U2 as the second musical act to play Sphere since it opened last fall . “You should just walk in and think that it was amazing, and you had a great time. If you’re sitting there thinking about what it took for us to build it, then that’s probably not right.”

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“We’re going to use all of the opportunities of this building — the audio, the visuals — and do it while supporting Phish truly playing music the way Phish plays music,” she says. “That became really the guiding star for everything that we thought about creatively. How do we create visuals and use all the technology of this space — and not impede Phish being able to play anything they want any way they want on the night?”

It’s a marked contrast from U2, which kept its show more or less the same for each of the 40 nights it played Sphere, and designed impressive song-specific visuals for several key tracks. That Phish will mix up its show for each gig on a four-night run — not repeating a single song — is a given; what that looks like in a venue with Sphere’s epic visual capabilities is less familiar territory.

Still, in Holmes and the Montreal-based multimedia studio Moment Factory, whose Sphere team is led by the show’s co-creative director Jean-Baptiste Hardoin , Phish has secured a creative crew that’s up to the paradoxical task of orchestrating an advanced, immersive sensory experience to accompany a band whose musical signature is improvisation. Holmes started working with Phish in 2016, when she collaborated with lighting director Chris Kuroda on designs for the band’s touring show, and she conceptualized the live production for Anastasio’s 2019 side project Ghosts of the Forest; her career dates back to lighting work on Talking Heads ‘ Stop Making Sense , and extends far beyond her concert résumé — she’s also worked with Janet Jackson and Roger Waters , among others — to architectural and installation projects, including a stint at Walt Disney Imagineering. “I feel like people often reach out to me for projects that don’t fall neatly into any really easy category,” she says, adding with a laugh, “People call me for their weird stuff.”

Sphere Reports $30M in Revenue From U2 Shows, But Debt Funding Plan Causes Stock Tumble

In Moment Factory, Phish united Holmes with kindred interdisciplinary spirits. The firm has worked with Phish several times dating back to 2015, including on its 2018 and 2021 Halloween gags and on its 2022 Earth Day show at Madison Square Garden — the one where the band turned the venue into an arena-sized aquarium. Like Holmes, Moment Factory’s work extends beyond its music clients — who include Billie Eilish and Halsey — and into airports, malls and more. But even so, Moment Factory producer Daniel Jean explains, “The challenge with Phish [at Sphere] was the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced […] to make sure that we create a show that is flexible and can react in real-time.” As Hardoin puts it, the team has been “trying to design the unpredictable.”

While Holmes and Moment Factory are tight-lipped about specific creative elements of the show, which they began workshopping in earnest last October, they share some broad strokes. Each night will have a loose theme, Holmes says, not unlike those that governed each concert in Phish’s 13-show Madison Square Garden “Baker’s Dozen” run in 2017. That choice “provided a little bit of a framework for a jumping-off point for ideas for the visuals,” she says, though she emphasizes it’s “not rigid in the song choice, it’s not rigid in the visuals.”

Those visuals will be twofold. Kuroda, the band’s longtime lighting designer, known for improvising his work along with the band’s jams, will continue that role at Sphere, utilizing a new version of his intricate rig designed specially for the venue. “The amazing rig that he has on tour was not a good fit into this building,” Holmes says. “It sits in front of the screen, it takes a lot of motors that would be in front of the screen. We realized pretty early on that that would have to change. I’m extremely excited to watch the new rig that’s designed for him in here. It plays a role in tandem with the screens instead of existing on its own.”

Moment Factory contributed to the set design that ensured Kuroda’s lighting rig and Sphere’s screen could live in harmony. And furthermore, Sphere has provided an opportunity for the company to expand its early 2000s roots in multimedia to staggering proportions. “We’re basically VJ’ing on a 16,000-by-16,000-pixel ratio for Sphere,” Jean says.

The exact nature of those visuals remain under wraps until Phish takes the stage on Thursday night – when they’ll be revealed not only to fans in attendance at Sphere, but also to viewers at home, as Phish’s run marks the first time concerts will be livestreamed from the venue – but the creative process Holmes and Moment Factory describe sounds groundbreaking. In a nutshell, the Moment Factory team has created visuals and worked with Holmes to create a playback interface — not unlike the custom programming Kuroda has implemented over the years for his lighting rig — that will allow for real-time manipulation of the visuals that follow Phish’s musical impulses.

“It was a matter of, OK, how can we evolve this universe for eight to 20 minutes, with different parameters, whether it’s the colors, whether it’s the saturation, whatever,” Hardoin says. “[Holmes] has a very good understanding of the music of the band. She’s able to modulate [the visuals] live, as lighting designers do.”

Phish Booked For 2024 Four-Show Sphere Run in Las Vegas

At the shows, Holmes will be executing the visuals, which will integrate generative content and use existing technologies in new ways, like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, a platform that allows creatives in fields like gaming, television and live events to blend live-action video and CG. (“That’s been pushed very far past what’s been done in other places,” Holmes says of Unreal.)

For months, Holmes and her team have used the vast trove of Phish concert recordings to simulate how the Sphere visuals “might evolve during a jam … being quite careful to use multiple versions, because they’re going to be radically different,” she says. “The visuals go in real-time to support [the band] and follow them musically, not the other way around.”

Phish’s penchant for newness is, in Holmes’ estimation, what will define the band’s Sphere run — and it explains why the booking appealed to the band in the first place. While the band capped off its 40th anniversary year in 2023 with a New Year’s Eve production of its Gamehendge saga, comprised of some of its oldest material, Phish has a new studio album out this summer ( Evolve , due July 12) and continues to introduce fresh material while rethinking its live presentation.

“When we think about this show, it’s today — it’s not referencing the past,” Holmes says. “This is a piece of them taking a huge risk and experimenting and trying something new, because that’s what they like to do.”

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Phish is a jam band run by a control freak. That’s perfect for the Sphere.

Trey anastasio leaves nothing to chance when staging his surreal spectacles, which invade the new las vegas landmark this month. his goal: to let the rest of the band groove without distraction..

W hen Phish sold out all four of the April concerts it had booked at the Sphere , just as quickly as everyone expected, the obvious question arose: Why not do more?

After all, U2 opened the $2.3 billion venue that remade the Las Vegas skyline this past fall with what was supposed to be a 25-show run — until demand built to a fever pitch, and the rock veterans shrewdly extended their stay, amortizing their investment in a dazzling, site-customized light-and-video show over an entire 40 nights.

And yet as Phish prepared to take up the Sphere’s second residency slot, and the band’s fervid fans bid up aftermarket prices well beyond U2’s, guitarist and frontman Trey Anastasio hesitated.

What would an extra weekend of shows mean for quality control?

He posed the question to show director and co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes. “It’ll be good,” she told him. “But it won’t be great. If you just do four nights, it’s going to blow minds.”

That was all Anastasio needed to hear.

“Then we’re not doing it,” he recalled telling her.

That is the Phish way. To the uninformed, it may come across as yet another breezy, shambolic jam band, inheritor of the Grateful Dead’s traveling circus. But devoted members of the Phish “herd” understand the complex dynamics that drive these erstwhile Vermont hippies. Anastasio and his bandmates want every show to be the aural equivalent of an Easter egg, offering joy and surprise and an unreplicable magic. At some shows, fans encounter an unannounced rock opera, staged with actors and elaborate props; at another, they’ll each walk away with a free box of mac-and-cheese. Phish never repeats a set, and it refuses to commemorate its classic albums.

Not exactly what you expect to find among the A-list nostalgia acts that dominate the Strip, which in coming months will host residencies by Mariah Carey, Garth Brooks and the Killers, re-creating their 2004 album “Hot Fuss.”

“There is a quality of Vegas where older bands go to play their old album, to make a lot of money late in the twilight of their career,” Anastasio says. “That’s not what we’re interested in.”

So Phish will sweep into town on April 18, intent on playing about 80 songs over the course of four concerts, repeating none. And yes, that will include most of the new material from “Evolve,” an album fans won’t hear until its July release. (The title track drops Thursday.)

Meanwhile, the Sphere’s high-tech 160,000-square-foot LED screen will offer the band a proper swirling canvas for its elaborate visions, as channeled by Holmes. She got her start as lighting director on the Talking Heads’ groundbreaking 1983 Stop Making Sense tour and has since collaborated with Roger Waters, Peter Gabriel, Miley Cyrus and Janet Jackson.

She is also — as is required in the Phish camp — an excellent secret-keeper. Anastasio divulges that the four shows will be linked by a theme, but neither he nor Holmes will say what it is.

“I’m not trying to be cagey,” she says. “I just want people to not have any idea what’s about to happen when they come into the room. That’s part of the fun of this.”

T he path to the Vegas Sphere began in an incongruous place: the tie-dye-friendly campus of the University of Vermont, where Anastasio jammed with longtime bassist Mike Gordon and dress-wearing drummer Jon Fishman for the first time on Dec. 2, 1983, in a student dining hall. A fourth member, guitarist Jeff Holdsworth, dropped out before graduation but the others kept going, soon joined by keyboardist Page McConnell.

It was a Burlington band through and through, imbued with the crunchy spirit of a city that had elected Bernie Sanders mayor, launched Ben & Jerry to ice cream fame and nurtured Bread & Puppet, a politically radical theater company known for its antiwar, anti-nuke parables told through gigantic puppets.

Phish built its loyal audience over a decade through constant touring, without MTV or radio hits. Eventually, after signing with Elektra, the band played “Saturday Night Live” and David Letterman’s show. But the musicians followed the Grateful Dead’s grass-roots model by creating their own company, Dionysian Productions, to handle tours and merch.

It was perhaps not surprising that Phish intersected with certain other aspects of Dead culture. Every show was a freewheeling party, awash in exotic substances. As the party grew, so did Anastasio’s personal struggles, and the band made the difficult decision to break up. The farewell show in 2004 in Coventry, Vt., grossed almost $9 million, but the guitarist remembers a more dizzying number: the 3,000 friends on the guest list for the out-of-control backstage festivities.

But Phish never fully drifted apart. The musicians were best friends as much as bandmates. Even at Anastasio’s lowest point — he was briefly jailed after a 2006 narcotics arrest — he remained in regular communication with Fishman, Gordon and McConnell. Stranded in Upstate New York for 14 months as he completed a felony drug-court program, he found himself picking up the phone to call McConnell.

“Like, a lot,” Anastasio recalls. “And he wasn’t happy because the band had broken up. Yet I never got that. I would call him, and he would answer the phone, and we would talk. I can’t even say how much I care about that man.”

“I guess in my heart, I never actually believed that the band was over,” explains McConnell.

In 2009, a rehabilitated Anastasio returned to the stage with the rest of Phish. There were some changes. The band members signed to a management company, Red Light, to liberate themselves of the pressure of overseeing a staff. And they altered the culture. No more open bar. Not even a can of beer. There was no discussion about this. It just happened.

“I think everyone was relieved to stop having these huge scenes backstage,” says McConnell. “It was just, you know, Trey’s sober and do we really want a bunch of people drinking backstage?”

Even while the easy, loose-limbed sound of classic Phish sprang back to life, the revived band’s prankster glee seemed to swell in scope and ambition. Lighting master Chris Kuroda handled a rig that grew so large it couldn’t always fit into arenas. At a show in 2009, Fishman was shot out of a cannon. In 2017, Phish played 13 Madison Square Garden concerts in a row (now known as “The Baker’s Dozen”) in which not a single song was repeated and a special doughnut was distributed to everyone in the audience. In 2018, a Halloween show turned into the debut of Kasvot Växt, an alter ego band of white-suited Scandinavian ’80s-synth enthusiasts, with an entire set of new songs written just for the gig.

B ut there was only one way for Phish to maintain the organic, improvisational sound that fans fell in love with while carrying out its ever more theatrical visions.

The mandate was to allow the musicians to remain in the moment, plucking jams out of thin air, and not let them get distracted by the cues involved with sending a giant drone whale soaring over the crowd or an all-male kick line in flesh-tone bodysuits dancing onto the stage in time for the closing chords of “Carini.”

Phish could only achieve this by shifting even more power to the band’s in-house control freak: Anastasio.

His wife, Sue, calls him the “relentless communicator.” He is the one who bonds the disparate figures who handle everything including sound, lighting, production and design in the Phish universe. Anastasio has a mantra, “Teams win,” that he repeats more than 10 times in a two-hour interview. He also peppers the conversation with an endless list of names (Garry … Abbey … Chris … Amy … “the French guys at Moment Factory ” … and of course Page, Mike and Fish) of people who deserve credit.

But ultimately, he concedes, this is not a democracy. Having one leader with never-ending energy is how you launch three major production-number set pieces in 18 months while also playing the Sphere and recording a new album.

“There was a time when we started doing these New Year’s gigs, where we’d all four be together, and all the management would all sit in a room and have multiple meetings of all of us, and eventually that kind of wore down to just Trey taking that on himself,” says McConnell. “If there was something that was really major, we would all discuss it together. But most of these things are just details, you know what I mean?”

The Sphere run started with a conversation at a Rangers game with James Dolan, the chief executive of Madison Square Garden, where Phish has played 83 times (more than Elton John, less than Billy Joel), and the mastermind behind the new Vegas venue .

There was initially talk of Phish going in first. But after U2 ultimately opened the venue in September, Anastasio and Holmes went to see the gig.

A longtime fan, Anastasio admired the way U2 commanded the arena. But he knew the Phish gig would have to be different. Take those hero shots of Bono and the Edge, looming large on the LED wrap as they strutted the stage.

“It suited Bono because he is that kind of star,” says Anastasio. “But that’s not me. I don’t do that. And same with Edge. There’s one song where he just rocks into the camera. He steps forward and he’s 800 feet high on the wall. I’m not going to do that.”

So what would he do? Holmes asked him early on.

“I said, ‘What do you think this is? Do you think this is one of those New Year’s productions or is this a Phish show in a great new environment?’” she recalls. “And his thought is that it’s a Phish show in a great new environment. And so that’s sort of how we framed thinking about all of the creative choices we’ve made. We wanted to absolutely make the most out of the room and also support Phish doing what Phish does best.”

Obviously, there would have to be four different sets for the four nights. That was barely a discussion. Sure, it would have been a lot easier for Holmes and the tech folks if they could stick to the same 20-song set list each night. But that would be like telling Jackson Pollock to paint poodle portraits.

“What won’t let us repeat a set is the fact that we don’t want to,” says McConnell. “We want to keep it fresh for ourselves and fresh for everybody else.”

Kuroda, the light master, would be on hand to work with Holmes. But Phish’s usual rig wouldn’t fit into the Sphere. And then there was the challenge of the sound.

At the U2 show, Anastasio was struck by how mono the mix was, as if all the speakers were crammed together, booming from the small stage on which the band performed. He discovered that there was a reason for this: The Sphere’s shape spawns reverberations that make it difficult to effect a true stereo sound without creating bounces and delays that would distract people on one side or the other. But Anastasio recognized it wasn’t inherent to the venue’s sound system. When he went to see the short Darren Aronofsky sci-fi film that screens regularly in the space with a different setup, he was impressed by the acoustics.

Enter veteran Phish sound man Garry Brown. With the help of the Sphere staff, he crafted a miniaturized version of the venue in Rock Lititz, Phish’s regular rehearsal space in central Pennsylvania.

“I don’t know what limitations U2 put on themselves, but obviously with them being the first one in the building, it was a learning experience,” says Brown. “With my mini-Sphere, I could technically go in, sit in Section 201, which is all the way left, you know, far away, all the way over. And I could technically sit there and place the instruments where I felt they could work. And then I could move around to 13 different seats in the venue digitally, to see if what I was doing was working. And so I’ve created a soundscape that is a lot wider than what U2 did.”

For Anastasio, the Vegas gigs will offer a chance to experiment with a new venue packed with sonic and visual opportunities. But then, having achieved mastery over the Sphere, Phish will happily put it in the past. This summer, the band will move on to multiple dates in Mansfield, Mass.; East Troy, Wis.; and the four-day Mondegreen Festival in the Woodlands of Dover, Del.

And Anastasio has his own visions yet to fulfill for those shows. He is always happiest with the one he just completed.

“I thought the Mexico shows [in February] were just crushing in terms of music,” he says. “Just the music itself. I know bands always say, ‘Well, our last shows were the best shows,’ and most of the time they’re lying. I’m actually not.”

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