Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus reveal special 'moment' from ABBA's shock reunion

30 April 2018 at 9:58pm
Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus reveal special 'moment' from ABBA's shock reunion




Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus relive their reunion. Credit: ITV News
ABBA may have stunned their fans with their first songs in more than three decades - but the return of the pop quartet surprised the band members too it seems.

In an ITV News exclusive, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus said getting together with Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad rekindled an instant chemistry.

"I had this moment in the studio, when there were the four of us plus the sound engineer and I was looking, you know, I remember this, this is so familiar," Ulvaeus said.

Abba record new music: ‘We may have come of age but the song is new’
Andersson added: "It's really like it says in the press release, it was like yesterday.

"And we all four felt ... it was like yesterday, although it was 35 years ago we were in the same studio."

ITV News Entertainment Editor Nina Nannar sat down with the Swedish duo and their fellow song maestro Sir Tim Rice to discuss another significant cultural revival: the hit 1980s musical Chess.

Watch the full interview below:

Gorel Hanser ABBA reunion 2018

– När de kom till studion var det som att ingen tid hade gått, säger ABBA:s manager Görel Hanser till Kulturnyheterna. Foto: TT



Popgruppen Abba har spelat in ny musik. ”Vi kände alla att det, efter 35 år, vore kul att träffas och gå in i inspelningsstudion”, skriver Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus och Anni-Frid Lyngstad ett pressmeddelande.
– Det är fantastiskt bra ABBA låtar och du kommer känna igen dig, säger deras manager Görel Hanser till Kulturnyheterna.

Den svenska popgruppen Abba släpper ny musik för första gången sedan 1981 – då deras sista skiva The Visitors kom. Det bekräftar deras manager Görel Hanser.

– När Björn och Benny föreslog att de skulle gå in i studion och prova igen, så tyckte tjejerna genast ”åh, ja vad kul”. Och sedan när de kom till studion var det som att ingen tid hade gått, säger Görel Hanser till Kulturnyheterna.

Enligt Görel Hanser har gruppen spelat in två nya låtar, Don’t shut me down och I still have faith in you.

– I still have faith in you, kommer att finnas med i det tv-progam som NBC och BBC producerar och som kommer sändas i december. Och där är inte ABBA med i sitt verkliga jag utan det är deras digitala alter egon som kommer vara med där och framföra den här låten, säger hon.

Gör tv-show
Tidigare i april avslöjades att gruppen i höst återförenas i form av digitalt framställda ”abbatarer” i en tv-show i samarbete med brittiska BBC och amerikanska NBC.

I pressmeddelandet skriver bandet vidare att studioarbetet utmynnat i två helt nya låtar:

“Det resulterade i två nya låtar och en av dem 'I still have faith in you' kommer att framföras av våra digitala jag i en tv-special producerad av NBC och BBC tänkt att sändas i december. Vi må ha blivit gamla, men låten är ny. Och det känns bra.”

Björn Ulvaeus har tidigare uppgett att de digitala varianterna av abba-medlemmarna även kommer att ge sig ut på en turné.

Sålde 400 miljoner skivor
Abba sålde under sin karriär över 400 miljoner skivor mellan åren 1972-1982. Från 70-talets mitt och fram till dess att gruppen upplöstes var de en av världens mest framgångsrika popgrupper med närmare 70 singlar som listettor världen över och över 60 albumettor.

Det stora internationella genombrottet kom 1974 i Eurovision Song Contest i form av låten Waterloo.

1982 gjorde Abbba sin sista studioinspelning och har därefter uppträtt vid endast ett tillfälle tillsammans i tv-programmet Här är ditt liv – ägnat gruppens legendariske manager Stikkan Andersson 1986.


https://www.svt.se/kultur/ny-musik-av-abba

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Abba reunited – have recorded new music
”We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it culd be fun to join forces again”
ABBA
FOTO: AP
ABBA
NÖJEfre 27 apr 2018
Swedish music legends Abba have reunited.
Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid have recorded new music.
”We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it culd be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio”, the group says in a joint statement.

The Swedish superstars in Abba have recorded two new songs, 35 years after calling it quits.

One of the songs, titles ”I still have faith in you” will be premiered in December performed by the Abba avatars in a tv special broadcasted by BBC and NBC.

In a joint statement Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad says:

”The decision to go ahead with the exciting Abba avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence. We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and that we only had been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!”

”The sound will be familiar, but also modern”
The group confirms that their studio work has resulted in two songs, one called ”I still have faith in you” which is to be released in December with a BBC and NBC tv-special to promote the new Abba avatar tour.


The Swedish supergroup also jokes about the fact that they now are 35 years older than when the group split:

”We may have come of age, but the song is new. And it feels good”, they say in the joint statement.

Speaking to Aftonbladet Abba’s spokesperson Görel Hanser describes Abba’s new session in the studio: ”It was like old times. Easy as nothing, it did’t feel weird that they hadn’t been in the studio together for 35 years.”

Hanser also spoke of the new Abba sound: ”The sound will be familiar, but also modern”.

Hanser declined to comment on a releasedate for the second song and also confirmed that the group won’t reunite on stage other than as avatars in the new Abba avatar tour: ”No, you can not expect them to join forces on stage again. They will not do that” says she.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/a/MgBVpR/abba-reunited--have-recorded-new-music

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actualizacion 05052018

Björn Ulvaeus about ABBA´s sound

Bjorn: "I can tell you that the voice of the singer is in a very good shape. Somewhat lower maybe, but they sound very abba



la foto es solo para ilustrar la nota

Björn Ulvaeus avslöjar Abbas konsertbeslut
Publicerad 29 apr 2018 kl 07.19

Abba gör oväntad comeback efter 35 år.

Nu berättar Björn Ulvaeus om hur enkelt det var för bandet att hitta tillbaka i inspelningsstudion - men han utesluter en kommande liveturné.

– Vi turnerade faktiskt aldrig så väldigt mycket. Vi skrev låtar och spelade in dem, det är vad vi gjorde, säger han i en intervju med CNN.


För 35 år sedan splittrades Abba. Men nu har världsstjärnorna avslöjat att de har spelat in ny musik tillsammans.

Den nya musiken kom till efter att Björn Ulvaeus, 73, Benny Andersson, 71, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 72, och Agnetha Fältskog, 68, tackat ja till att göra en hologramföreställning. Showen görs tillsammans med Universal Music Group och Simon Fuller, mannen bakom tv-programmet ”Idol”.

”Beslutet att sjösätta det spännande Abba-avatar-projektet fick en oväntad konsekvens. Vi fyra kände att det efter 35 år kunde vara roligt att jobba ihop igen och gå in i studion. Så gjorde vi det. Och det var som att tiden hade stått stilla och att vi bara hade varit borta på en kort semester. En extremt glädjande upplevelse!” skriver de fyra Abba-medlemmarna i ett pressmeddelande.

Det är två nya låtar som har kommit till: ”I still have faith in you” och "Don't shut me down". Precis som förr är det låtskrivarduon Ulvaeus och Andersson som har skrivit text och musik.


”Vi trodde att vi skulle bli bortglömda, men så blev det inte”
För Abba-fansen är återföreningen efterlängtad. I en intervju med CNN berättar Björn Ulvaeus om hur beslutet fattades.

– Efter att tag väcktes idén: ”Vi kanske inte bara ska ha gamla låtar, utan även ett par nya”. Benny och jag blev inspirerade och skrev två nya låtar. Tjejerna kom in i studion och vi spelade in, säger han.

Trots att Abba inte varit i en studio tillsammans sedan 1982 hittade medlemmarna omedelbart tillbaka.

– Det förbluffande var att vi bara tittade på varandra - och det var som att ingen tid hade passerat alls. Banden mellan oss är så starka tack vare de upplevelser vi har gått igenom tillsammans. Då menar jag inte bara de tio år vi var aktiva, utan även åren efteråt. Vi trodde att vi skulle bli bortglömda, men så blev det inte, säger Björn Ulvaeus.

Enligt Björn Ulvaeus kommer lyssnarna känna igen bandets signifikanta sound.

– Jag kan berätta att sångerskornas röster är i väldigt bra form. Något lägre kanske, men de låter väldigt mycket Abba, säger han.

Ulvaeus om att spela live igen
De nya låtarna spelades in redan förra sommaren, men först i december kommer världen kunna höra dem.

Den stora frågan som många nu ställer sig är om det finns en chans att få se bandet liveturnera.

– Nej. Inte jag åtminstone. Det är ett hårt liv där ute, säger Björn Ulvaeus.

Enligt låtskrivaren är det en vanlig missuppfattning att Abba skulle ha turnérat ihärdigt mellan 1972-1982.

– Vi turnerade faktiskt aldrig så väldigt mycket. Vi skrev låtar och spelade in dem, det är vad vi gjorde. Under de tio år vi var aktiva var vi ute i sammanlagt sju månader. Det är allt, säger han.

https://www.expressen.se/noje/bjorn-ulvaeus-avslojar-abbas-konsertbeslut/

Interview Björn Ulvaeus Abbas's new songs

27042018



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-8c7KXp42Q
source: expressen.se
An interview in CNN
"We thought we would be forgotten, but it does not seem to be at all"
It was amazing. We had not been in the studio since 1982 but it took just a moment, then we just looked at each other - it was as if no time had passed. I guess that's because we're so good friends and the ties between us are so strong"

The world sends an S.O.S. and ABBA answers

The world sends an S.O.S. and ABBA answers
It’s impossible not to feel happy when hearing “Super Trouper” or “Chiquitita.” So the news of new ABBA songs is exactly what we needed.




By VINAY MENONEntertainment Columnist
Fri., April 27, 2018
ABBA is releasing new music and the world is a better place.


On Friday morning, amid a sudden burst of happy news from around the globe — “The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are delighted to announce that they have named their son Louis Arthur Charles,” “North and South Korea vow to end the Korean War in historic accord,” “Bill Cosby found guilty of sexual assault” — the biggest jolt of pure delight came from Stockholm.

What? Are you kidding? ABBA has recorded two new songs?

I haven’t been this overjoyed since my kids were born.

The first track, the aptly named “I Still Have Faith in You,” is due in December. NBC and the BBC will broadcast the song as part of ABBA’s upcoming virtual tour, one that stars hologram versions of the band’s founding members.

“The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence,” the real members said in a statement on Friday. “We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and that we only had been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!”


For them and, eight months from now, for us.

Stop. No, no. Don’t even think about getting cynical in the face of this glorious news. This divided world needs ABBA more than ever. All these years later, the pop group still has the ability to slice across demos and unite people from all walks of life inside a thumping cocoon of sonic warmth.

To hear an ABBA song is to tap your foot and shake off your troubles.

ABBA is the soundtrack to coming together and forgetting our differences.

You know why you’ve never met anyone who absolutely hates ABBA? Trick question: it’s impossible to absolutely hate ABBA. It can’t be done. With their ridiculously catchy melodies, hypnotic chord-changes, timeless beats, soothing harmonies and universal lyrics, the group has transcended time and place.

I have heard ABBA songs in Barcelona cafes and Jaipur hotels. I have heard ABBA songs in German train stations and Mexican airports. I have heard ABBA songs at proms, birthday parties, weddings and every other ritualized celebration we soppy humans are hardwired to enjoy when we let our guards down.

In fact, not hearing an ABBA song is a great way to realize you’re not supposed to be in a festive mood. Visit a Service Ontario outpost and you’ll never hear “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” Get stuck in the hell of a customer service phone queue and the hold music will never include “S.O.S.” or “Chiquitita,” even if you’re calling Chiquita with a banana emergency.

Which is crazy because ABBA is musical Prozac. It lifts our spirits.

From road trips to doing the dishes, there is nothing ABBA can’t make better.

If you’ve never felt the blinding urge to jump up and dance upon hearing the first cascading bar of “Dancing Queen,” you may be dead inside. If you’ve never cranked up the volume when “Super Trouper” unexpectedly rumbled to life, you don’t know what it’s like to get truly lost in a moment of sheer musical bliss.

About 46 years after they formed in the glittering disco era of platform shoes and wide collars, that’s what ABBA is still about. This bubblegum pop sticks to our ears because it remains, first and foremost, about feeling good.

And feeling good is no easy thing these days.

We may disagree over politics, religion, culture, society and Kanye West, but start playing “Waterloo” or “Mamma Mia” and watch as the discord morphs into an impromptu dance party. You can be poor and still gleefully belt out “Money, Money, Money.” Even a loser like me can appreciate “The Winner Takes It All.”

Thank you for the music, ABBA, and for knowing me, knowing you.

“We may have come of age, but the song is new,” the band said on Friday, in a statement that should have come from the UN. “And it feels good.”

It does. But why stop at two new songs?

Since winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, ABBA has always been greater than the sum of its Swedish parts. The four members, whose names still sound suspiciously like Ikea test products — Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad — should stay in the studio and keep making new music.

What’s the name of the game? Does it mean anything to you?

Exactly. Now that you’re back, ABBA, we need you to stick around.

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/opinion/2018/04/27/the-world-sends-an-sos-and-abba-answers.html

'Magical': What happened inside the recording studio with ABBA

'Magical': What happened inside the recording studio with ABBA
By Neil McMahon28 April 2018 — 5:18am

ABBA’s return to the recording studio is one of the most long-awaited, surprising band reunions in music history - and here’s what to expect from their "magical" reconciliation and their first song in 35 years.
In an exclusive Australian interview with Fairfax Media, long-time ABBA business partner and confidante Gorel Hanser, who was in the studio for the reunion recording session, reveals: It’s a ballad.
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The Swedish pop legends say they've recorded their first new songs since 1982.

The song, I Still Have Faith In You, was specifically written for this reunion by the ABBA men - Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson - and is not a dusty composition pulled from the bottom drawer from the 1970s.
It’s sung together by the ABBA women, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, re-igniting their instantly recognisable vocal duel but with neither taking a solo lead.
And the making-of story behind this reunion was a warm, emotional affair when the four band members - two pairs of former spouses - finally came together again to record their first music since 1982.
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"It was wonderful," Hanser says. "It was magical. It was a very warm, relaxed, happy atmosphere, no hard feelings, no stress… it was like 35 years hadn't passed. Like back in the old days. It was very emotional."

The band left the studio "very happy, all of them".
In a statement, the ABBA members said: "We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go in to the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and that we only had been away on a short holiday. We may have come of age, but the song is new. And it feels good."
The recording session was driven by a semi-reunion project flagged two years ago, a vaguely defined show involving ABBA reproduced as digital avatars. That ABBA-avatar project is still going ahead but now with this new original music attached, Hanser says.
"Along the way, Bjorn and Benny talked about maybe it would be good to have a couple of new songs included in this show… and then they wrote some new songs for this show. This was something that gave them the idea of writing something new for ABBA, for a special cause, for a special project."
ABBA's reunion in the studio was warm, relaxed and happy, their longtime confidant Gorel Hanser told Fairfax Media.
ABBA's reunion in the studio was warm, relaxed and happy, their longtime confidant Gorel Hanser told Fairfax Media.

Photo: AP
The band has recorded two new songs: I Still Have Faith In You, which the world will hear for the first time when the avatar show is revealed in a TV special in December, and another song, Don’t Shut Me Down, that is likely to follow as a single release when it premieres on the avatar tour.
"The first song is more of a ballad, the second song is more of an up-tempo song,” Hanser told Fairfax Media.
And how did the band go about matching the ABBA sound of the 1970s and 1980s to a new era?
"I think you do it the same way as you have always done it - the best you possibly can," Hanser said.
"They have always done it their own way. They did it today the way they always did. The way Benny writes music. And the lyrics are more mature... the way they are today."
You will recognise ABBA, no problem - but it is ABBA 2018."
As to the question fans worldwide now want answered: Does this mean a possible on-stage reunion? Hanser has bad news.
ABBA famously knocked back an offer of $1billion to reunite for a world tour and apparently it’s the same response now.
"No," she says. "They will not be performing as a group again."
That leaves the avatar tour as the only live hope for the ABBA faithful, and that tour is certain to include Australia, where the band first exploded as a music force in 1975.
"Australia is a dear, dear country to ABBA, absolutely," Hanser said.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/magical-what-happened-inside-the-recording-studio-with-abba-20180428-p4zc5y.html

Abba announce first new music since 1982

Abba announce first new music since 1982
By Mark Savage
BBC Music reporter
27 April 2018

Agregar leyenda

Pop group Abba have returned to the studio to record their first new music since the 1980s.

The Swedish quartet said the new material was an "unexpected consequence" of their recent decision to put together a "virtual reality" tour.

"We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the studio," the band said on Instagram.

"And it was like time stood still."

No release date has been set for the new songs - but one of them, titled I Still Have Faith In You, will be performed in December on a TV special broadcast by the BBC and NBC.




Abba's spokesperson Gorel Hanser told the BBC the atmosphere in the studio was "magic".

"It was like no time had passed at all," she said. "It was like the olden days. They were happy, it was easy and warm-hearted, and it was actually quite moving. I wasn't the only one with tears in my eyes."

But she said said the group would not perform live, other than as holograms in the forthcoming Abba Avatar tour.

"It's a studio moment, I can promise you," she said. "Don't expect too much."

Image Copyright @BBCPM@BBCPM
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The band have resisted pressure to reform since they stopped recording together in 1982, despite a reported $1bn (£689m) offer to tour in 2000.

In an interview with the BBC in 2013, Agnetha Faltskog said she preferred to leave the band in the past.

"It was such a long time ago, and we are getting older, and we have our different lives," she explained.

News of the new material comes in a bumper year for Abba fans. An immersive exhibition based on the band's career is running on London's South Bank, while Chess, the musical Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson wrote with Sir Tim Rice, is being revived in the West End.

Will Abba's new music ruin their legacy?
Abba give first performance in 30 years
6 shocks from the Mamma Mia 2 trailer
Abba's Agnetha comes out of retirement
A sequel to the film version of Mamma Mia!, starring Amanda Seyfried, Lily James and Cher, will be released on 20 July.

Speaking to BBC News, Rod Stephen, founder of Abba tribute act Bjorn Again, described the new material as "a whole new beginning".

Image copyrightSHUTTERSTOCK
Image caption
Bjorn, Anni-Frid, Agnetha and Benny pictured at the Swedish production of Mamma Mia in 2016
"I heard about Abba releasing new songs and I was instantly, like everyone else in the Abba community, really excited to know what the songs were and how they're going to sound. Will it have that 1970s sound or will it be up to date?

"It's brilliant really, because we love Abba's music to death. I just hope they're great songs, I hope they're equivalent to Dancing Queen or Mamma Mia."

He added: "I know Benny and Bjorn wouldn't release something in this way unless they were good songs."

Speaking to the BBC's Adam Fleming last week, Ulvaeus had hinted that there could be new material. Here's what he said:


Media captionBjorn Ulvaeus hints there could be new ABBA material
How did the Abba avatar idea come about?

We were introduced to an idea by Simon Fuller who is, as you know, an entertainment entrepreneur - [creator of] the format of American Idol and manager of the Spice Girls and so forth.

He came to Stockholm and he presented this idea to us that we could make identical digital copies of ourselves of a certain age and that those copies could then go on tour and they could sing our songs, you know, and lip sync. I've seen this project halfway through and it's already mind-boggling.

What does it actually look like? Does it look like a younger you?

Yes. Real. And they say once it's finished you'll never see that it's not a human being. And what attracted me personally to this is of course I'm always curious, scientifically-curious and this is new technology and we are pioneers. So I thought, 'Yeah let's go for it,' and you know the other three went for it as well.

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What is the actual format of the tribute show going to be? Is it going to be these Abba-tars all the way though?

No, other people as well. And as for the format I'm not entirely sure what it's going to look like but some sort of tribute show with these Abba-tars for want of a better word as the kind of centrepiece.

Will you write new material for it?

We don't know what the Abba-tars will sing yet but there's lots to choose from of the old stuff and yeah, I'm not ready to say that yet.

So there could be new songs…

I'm… it's up in the air.

Stay tuned…

Yeah.

Why not reform and have a reunion? The real you, rather than the virtual ones.

Yeah, why not? Well… it never seemed like a good idea. It's not that we haven't had offers over the years. But somehow we always thought that the Abba that people have in their minds are the once-young and energetic group from the '70s. And we just never felt the urge to go on tour, I guess.

On the whole we toured very little. We had like 10 years together and of those 10 years maybe we toured, like, seven months. Not more than that. So to go on tour as a geriatric, I don't know!

Formed in 1972, Abba were essentially a Swedish supergroup, consisting of songwriters Ulvaeus and Andersson from The Hep Stars and singers Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who had scored success as solo artists.

But their joint project completely eclipsed their previous successes. After winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo in 1974, the band sold almost 400 million singles and albums around the world.

Mamma Mia!, the musical based on their hits and produced by Ulvaeus and Andersson, has been seen by more than 50 million people.

During their most successful period, the band survived marriage break-ups between Ulvaeus and Faltskog, and Lyngstad and Andersson, but they finally called it a day in 1983.

Their final recording sessions, in 1982, produced the hits Under Attack and The Day Before You Came, which featured on the compilation album The Singles.

Their last public performance came three years later, on the Swedish version of TV show This Is Your Life, which honoured their manager Stig Anderson.





http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43924609

ABBA reunion: Swedish group announce first new music in 35 years

ABBA reunion: Swedish group announce first new music in 35 years
Group posted a joint statement that was echoed by their manager, announcing an upcoming ‘Abbatar’ tour and two new songs
ABBA have announced they are set to release new music for the first time in 35 years.

Posting a statement on the official ABBA Instagram account, the band wrote: “The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence.

“We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!”


The statement continued: “It resulted in two new songs and one of them ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ will be performed by our digital selves in a TV special produced by NBC and the BBC aimed for broadcasting in December.


https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/abba-reunion-new-music-songs-sweden-group-release-uk-latest-news-a8325296.html

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Abba announce first new songs for 35 years
Swedish four-piece take to Instagram to announce two releases that will form part of an ‘avatar tour project’

Alexis Petridis: Abba’s return will be either genius or disaster – but nothing in between
‘I Still Have Faith In You’ - What do you think Abba’s new song will be like?



Abba have announced that they have written and recorded their first new songs since they split in 1983.

The Swedish four-piece, who had nine No 1 hits in the UK between 1974 and 1980, and who have sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide, announced on Instagram that they had recorded two new songs for a project in which avatars of the band will perform.

Abba's return will be either genius or disaster – but nothing in between
Alexis Petridis
Alexis Petridis
Read more
The band said in a statement: “The decision to go ahead with the exciting Abba avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence. We all felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!”

One of the two new songs that resulted, called I Still Have Faith in You, will feature in a TV special to air in December.

The statement concluded: “We may have come of age, but the song is new. And it feels good.”

Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus revealed details of the band’s forthcoming project in Brussels earlier this week. The centrepiece is the two-hour TV show co-produced by NBC and the BBC, which will see the band perform as computer-generated avatars. Ulvaeus said the band had been digitally scanned and “de-aged” to look like they did in 1979, when they performed their third and final tour.

The avatars are then set to tour the world from next year.

Abba formed in Stockholm in 1972. They comprised two couples: Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog; and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, all of whom had enjoyed musical careers in Sweden. The group burst on to the international stage after winning the Eurovision song contest in Brighton in 1974 with their song Waterloo.

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From the mid-70s until they split, Abba built up a formidable arsenal of global hits including Knowing Me, Knowing You, Take a Chance on Me, Dancing Queen and The Name of the Game – all of which reached No 1 in the UK.

Fältskog and Lyngstad were the lead singers; Andersson and Ulvaeus composed the songs. Never less than impeccably produced and performed, Abba’s records were critically disdained at the time, but their popularity has endured. Their 1992 compilation Abba Gold has sold 30m copies – more than 5m of those in the Britain – and .

Their jukebox musical Mamma Mia! debuted in the West End in 1999 and is still running both in London and worldwide; its website claims that it has been seen by 60 million people in 440 cities.


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The stage show was adapted into a film in 2008, which grossed $615m (£447m) worldwide. A sequel, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, will be released in June. The actor Lily James – who is set to appear alongside the cast of the first film including Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried and Colin Firth – : “There’s lot of songs in there, lots of new ones. Lots of ones, actually, that weren’t in my repertoire of Abba and I think they’re going to be huge hits again, and reawaken the love of Abba.”

Abba’s split in 1983 followed the divorces of both couples. Ulvaeus and Andersson went on to write two musicals, including Chess – a revival by the English National Opera opens on Friday in London – before largely devoting themselves to Abba’s legacy. Fältskog and Lyngstad have kept much lower profiles, though Fältskog – long claimed to be a recluse – returned to pop music with an album, A, which was released in 2013.

The group have long held out against lucrative offers to reform – they were reported to have been offered $1bn to play a concert in 2000. In 2014, Ulvaeus told Billboard: “you will never see us on stage again … we don’t need the money, for one thing.”

Peter Robinson, editor of Popjustice, described the announcement as “the biggest pop news of the 21st century. Most fans grudgingly admired Abba’s refusal to record new music, but I think we all sometimes daydreamed about the band possibly, maybe, one day having a rethink at the right time, on the right terms and for the right reasons, which seems to be what’s happened here.” He added: “It’s a pop miracle.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/27/abba-announce-first-new-songs-for-35-years


---------------------------------------------

ABBA to release first new material in 35 years
By Michael Idato27 April 2018 — 10:35pm


It may be incorrect to say that the Swedish supergroup ABBA have got back together; for many years they took great pain to point out that they had never formally broken up.
And yet news that they have reformed to record two new songs has been greeted around the world like the second coming, albeit one seasoned in blue eyeshadow and a little bit of glitter.
ABBA will release new material for the first time in 35 years.
ABBA will release new material for the first time in 35 years.

Photo: AP
The four members of the group - Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad - have announced they have recorded two new songs.
The first is titled I Still Have Faith in You, and will be released in November as part of an already announced digital concert television project in which computer-generated "Abbatars" of the group will perform with a live band.
The second is still unknown.
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"The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence," a statement from the group said.
"We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did."

The group described the experience as "extremely joyous".
"It was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. We may have come of age, but the song is new and it feels good."
Though they are one of the most successful groups in the history of pop music, there has always been something very simple and organic about their process.
Ulvaeus and Andersson famously wrote the group's best music in a little cottage on an island in the Swedish archipelago and, despite the musical complexity of the songs, did not put music notation to paper.
Benny and Frida were the first off the plane to wave to fans at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport in 1977.
Benny and Frida were the first off the plane to wave to fans at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport in 1977.

Photo: The Age
They also famously experimented in the studio, recording the same song in several styles, and sometimes with different lyrics, until they were happy with a final version.
The timing of the announcement cannot be discounted - a week ahead of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon, Portugal. ABBA's big break came at 1974's Eurovision, at The Dome, in Brighton, in the UK, when they sang one of their biggest hits, Waterloo.
What followed was stunning, transforming them into a worldwide phenomenon, as hit piled on hit: Mamma Mia, Fernando, SOS, Dancing Queen, Chiquitita and more. As with success came Money, Money, Money.
The recipe was curiously European but nonetheless infectious: the gentle flirtation between the couples - Fältskog and Ulvaeus, Lyngstad and Andersson - the often eccentric wardrobe, the easily mimicked choreography. And those tearaway cat dresses, oh my.
For eight years they topped the charts, and then came divorce, tension and, ultimately, dissolution.
Though it was never an explicit part of their songwriting style, ABBA's most complex songs did seem to bring an echo of their real-world experience into their music.
Slipping Through My Fingers came straight from Bjorn and Agnetha's heartbreak as their daughter Linda grew up. I'm a Marionette talked to the exhaustion of their touring fame, and of course The Winner Takes It All as their marriages - and the band - began to disintegrate.
They group last appeared together - formally, as ABBA - on Britain's The Late, Late Breakfast Show on December 11, 1982.

The rebirth of the band - if they ever truly went away - was kicked off in the 1990s with the release of ABBA Gold in 1992, and two Australian films in 1994, Muriel's Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Fitting perhaps, as Australia had been one of the first coutries outside Europe to embrace them.
And then Mamma Mia, the monstrous Broadway hit, which places a collection of their songs into the loose framework of a Greek romantic comedy, came in 1999; the appearance of all four members of ABBA at the 2008 Swedish premiere of the musical was properly historic.
A film version came out in 2008, and a sequel is due later this year.
The question of whether they would ever reform is more complex. For many years all four were adamant they would not. Though Ulvaeus and Andersson continued working together, Fältskog and Lyngstad had moved on.
Former ABBA members Bjorn Ulvaeus, left, and Benny Andersson with actress Catherine Johnson at a performance of the musical Mamma Mia! in London.
Former ABBA members Bjorn Ulvaeus, left, and Benny Andersson with actress Catherine Johnson at a performance of the musical Mamma Mia! in London.

Photo: AP
"I think we have to accept that it will not happen, because we are too old and each one of us has their own life," Fältskog, by a noticeable measure the most reclusive of the four, said in 2013. "Too many years have gone by since we stopped and there's really no meaning in putting us together again."
And then a year later, she said: "As long as we can sing and play, then why not? I would love to, but it's up to Björn and Benny."
Though The Way Old Friends Do was not their last recorded song, it seems now to sit in their own musical history, a curious pivot between the group's original repertoire and this strange moment of historic reconnection.
After fights and words of violence / we make up with each other / the way old friends do, it goes. Times of joy and times of sorrow / we will always see it through / I don't care what comes tomorrow / we can face it together, the way old friends do.
It makes the choice of title for their first new release in 35 years all the more signficant: I Still Have Faith in You.
As their fans always, unwaveringly, had in them.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/abba-to-release-first-new-material-in-35-years-20180427-p4zc5s.html

Andante, Andante!

Frida and Arturo Sandoval in Andante, Andante!

https://open.spotify.com/album/2UIV5JLR7ogR7jHLdCKzyG

Björn´s birthday

Cher performance, Fernando

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY-o608B6GM


Universal promotes films with Cher performance, new footage
By: LINDSEY BAHR, AP Film Writer

Updated: Apr 25, 2018 - 4:23 PM
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Universal promotes films with Cher performance, new footage
LAS VEGAS (AP) - From a surprise Cher performance to new footage of everything from Damien Chazelle's Neil Armstrong biopic "First Man" to M. Night Shyamalan's "Glass" and Jamie Lee Curtis's return to "Halloween," Universal Pictures pulled out all the showstoppers for CinemaCon attendees Wednesday morning.
Cher and a dozen backup dancers brought the house down at Caesar's Palace with a lively performance of Abba's "Fernando." The legendary performer co-stars in the upcoming movie musical "Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!" a sequel to wildly popular 2008 film, which arrives in theaters on July 20. She plays the mother of Meryl Streep's character.

The performance closed out Universal's presentation at the annual gathering of theater owners and exhibitors, where the studio wowed the audience with first looks at a number of their most anticipated releases, including the scary opening to "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," out June 22.

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Universal also brought out stars like Chris Pratt, Bruce Willis, Kevin Hart, Ryan Gosling, Tiffany Haddish and Samuel L. Jackson to hype their upcoming slate.

"We love making movies as much as we love going to see them," said Universal Pictures chair Donna Langley

Gosling said it was an honor to play Neil Armstrong in "First Man," Chazelle's first movie since he won the best director Oscar for "La La Land." The first trailer for the film teased a tense and heart-pounding experience, showing the famed astronaut heavy with responsibility before his historic mission to the moon.

"We have real confidence in the mission, we have every intention of coming back," Gosling, as Armstrong says in the trailer to his young son. The film takes flight on Oct. 12.

M. Night Shyamalan also came out to preview "Glass," which blends the worlds of his films "Split" and "Unbreakable," with stars Jackson, Willis, James McAvoy and Sarah Paulson.

"It's about time I got the title role in my own mother(expletive) movie," Jackson said.

Shyamalan says it's the, "first grounded comic book movie." It's expected in theaters in Jan. 2019.

Jamie Lee Curtis also introduced the first footage from "Halloween" in which she returns to the role of Laurie Strode, which she originated 40 years ago in John Carpenter's 1978 film.

"We had no money," Curtis remembered about the film. "But John Carpenter and Debra Hill had a vision. It would come to stand as an unyielding sustaining influence in the canon of horror. It is still terrifying in its simplicity."

This new showdown with Michael Myers is directed by David Gordon Green and hits theaters on Oct. 19.

One of the only major stars who wasn't there was Dwayne Johnson, a CinemaCon mainstay, who has the film "Skyscraper" with Universal. But the star and new father recorded a video message for the occasion, explaining that he's on "baby duty" right now and suffering from a lack of sleep.

"Skyscraper" was described as "Die Hard" meets "The Towering Inferno," and, director Rawson Marshall Thurber said it was inspired by "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and even "The Fugitive."

Speaking of Harrison Ford, the studio's animation arm, Illumination Entertainment, also announced that Ford would be taking on his first animated project ever, voicing a role in the sequel to "The Secret Life of Pets."

Universal Pictures is among a handful of Hollywood studios who are presenting to theater owners and exhibitors throughout the week. Since Monday, studio executives have been stressing the diversity of their slates and the health of the movie industry.

"The theatrical experience is alive and well and it's the cornerstone of our industry," said Peter Levinsohn, the president and chief distribution officer of Universal Filmed Entertainment. "Whatever challenges and opportunities we may face, we'll face them together."

https://www.wftv.com/entertainment/cher-performs-fernando-at-cinemacon-to-standing-ovation/738426739

Digital avatars will allow Abba to tour again

Digital avatars will allow Abba to tour again
Matthew Moore, Media Correspondent
April 24 2018, 12:01am, The Times
Old Abba stars never retire, they just get digitally regenerated 40 years later to perform to a television audience of hundreds of millions around the globe.
Virtual “Abbatars” representing all four members of the Swedish pop group will be revealed for the first time this autumn at a show that could clear the way for other maturing artists to go on tour without leaving the comfort of their sofas.






The Abba star Björn Ulvaeus, 72, revealed event details during a speech in Brussels, promising a “global television moment” to rival the Eurovision Song Contest. The two-hour show is expected to be broadcast by the BBC in Britain and simulcast across the globe. A world tour will follow in 2019 or 2020, which industry insiders say could generate hundreds of millions of pounds in ticket sales.
Ulvaeus and his bandmates have been scanned using high-tech imaging equipment and “de-aged” to appear as they looked at their musical peak in 1979. “We thought we looked good that year,” Ulvaeus said.
Silicon Valley experts are using archive video footage to replicate how the band danced, dressed and sang so they can be programmed to perform classic Abba hits such as Waterloo, Mamma Mia and Dancing Queen.
The effect is “simply mind-boggling”, according to Ulvaeus. “You’ll hear the voices of Abba coming out of the mouths of the Abbatars,” he said. “You won’t be able to see that they’re not human beings. It’ll be spooky, I assure you, but great fun and no one has done it before.”
The television special is being produced by the American network NBC and sold across the world by BBC Studios, the national broadcaster’s commercial arm.
The technology has already been used to recreate Elvis and to help Narendra Modi address party rallies in India
Details of the show, including its location, are still under wraps but it is understood that other famous acts will perform Abba tributes before the Abbatars take to the stage to sing one classic track as the finale.
Abba sold more than 400 million albums but have not sung together since 1986, apart from at a private party in 2016. The four members — Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, 71, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 72, and Agnetha Faltskog, 68 — have resisted previous attempts to organise a reunion but gave their full consent to the Abbatar project, which has the potential to be hugely lucrative. If the technology is embraced by fans it will allow artists to stage concerts anywhere in the world without the trouble and expense of travelling. U2’s 360° tour in 2009-11 made a record £453 million, ahead of the Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang tour (£397 million in 2005-07) and Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams tour, which ended last year with total revenues of £396 million.
Virtual touring may prove particularly attractive to rockers of a certain vintage, such as Mick Jagger, 74. Promoters could also stage concerts long after their performers have died.

Ulvaeus said that “techno artists” from the US had scanned all four members of Abba last year. “They photographed us from all possible angles, they made us grimace in front of cameras, they painted dots on our faces, they measured our heads,” he told broadcasting executives last week. “Apparently, a cranium doesn’t change with age the way the rest of your body falls apart.”
The singer acknowledged an “existential dimension” to the project, as the band explored what it would be like to be young again: “The wisdom that we hopefully possess now in combination with the youth of the Abbatars.”
Musicians including Tupac and Michael Jackson have been brought back to life as holograms for one-off performances, to mixed reviews, but the technology behind the Abbatars is understood to be more advanced. It is being developed by XIX Entertainment, the company established by the British pop impresario Simon Fuller who launched the Spice Girls and the reality television show Pop Idol.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/digital-avatars-will-allow-abba-to-tour-again-m8khkg6ss?_ga=2.249467655.1632363264.1524574818-353718805.1524574818

https://www.facebook.com/notes/abbaregistro-page/digital-avatars-will-allow-abba-to-tour-again/610501282631693/

ABBA to come back in a virtual show!

ABBA to come back in a virtual show!
Björn Ulvaeus was speaking at the EBU Media Summit

ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus addresses first EBU Media Summit in Brussels




published on 19 Apr 2018 • Department / Unit Media Radio

Author / Speaker

Björn Ulvaeus

Source / Event

Media Summit 2018 - 19 April 2018 - Brussels

BJÖRN ULVAEUS KEYNOTE TO MEDIA SUMMIT 2018
I probably wouldn’t be standing here before you today if it wasn’t for the magnificent flagship of European Public Broadcasting, the Eurovision Song Contest. As most of you know I was in the winning team way back in 1974. Which, incidentally, means it took you all of 44 years to invite me to speak at this event. But, what a launching pad that was. The Eurovision Song Contest is a big deal. Some people want to make it less of a big deal. They frown and look down on it and the say it’s shallow and devoid of deeper meaning and thus, they say, it doesn’t belong on Public Service Media.

I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to you when I say I disagree. It would, of course, be monumentally stupid to start this speech in front of this audience by criticizing the Eurovision Song Contest, but that apart, I honestly disagree because I think the ESC is exactly what Public Service Media can and must be - among a host of other things, which I will come to. It’s entertaining, broad and inclusive. And no commercial network could ever do it as well as the EBU. I would say, in all its glory, those bright hours of fun somehow give us a sense of Europeanness, if there is such a word. If there isn’t there should be.

I am unashamedly grateful for having been born in this part of the world, this Europe, where, despite all the setbacks with wars and other atrocities, the Greek and Roman philosophers, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and much, much more has paved the way for the liberal, secular democracies we live in today. I won’t say that I’m proud of it because I had very little to do with how this European history developed, but I will say that I count myself lucky to be able to enjoy the benefits.

I have to admit that I wasn’t always a fan of Public Service.

I know I look very young, but I grew up before television. There was only one radio channel. One public service radio channel and they played one or two pop songs a week in ONE show on Saturdays. I was starved. Then a pirate radio station popped up, Radio Nord, and they played pop all day long, interspersed with commercials.

I loved Radio Nord, even the commercials, so when the Swedish Parliament shut it down I consequently hated Public Service Media. I was only seventeen. But even though I felt that way about PSM back then, there was never a shadow of a doubt in my mind that every word uttered in those Swedish Radio programs was true. The people of Sweden trusted this wonderful institution one hundred percent.

Sadly, that trust seems to be slipping. A fresh survey by SIFO shows that trust in Swedish public service media, especially television is going down and has slowly been going down since 2010. It may be different in some of your countries – and you all know what you are up against in your own countries, I’m just using Sweden as an example to make a point

I find this very disturbing and worrying. And why is it, as it seems to be, that trust is on a slippery slope? Well, there are of course many reasons, but I think one could be that fierce competition with commercial broadcasters sometimes may lead to, shall we say, a different journalistic ambition. An ambition to make every program, whatever the content, broad and entertaining.

Recently I had an experience that terrified me. I was the target myself and what I saw from inside was SVT - Swedish Television - acting like a tabloid. A show called “Mission Scrutiny”. They interviewed me, so I knew for sure they had all the relevant facts available in this particular matter, but they chose to select only those that fitted their preferred angle. And they painted a false picture, in which I was a decidedly shady character. Clearly to maximize ratings and clicks.

I was hurt. Of course, I was. But believe me, that’s not why I’m telling you this. It’s because it scares me as a citizen. I’ve been an inside witness to something, which I think is the absolute opposite of what public service media should be. Short term sensationalism is bound to erode long term trust. There are fundamental values at stake here and if they’re lost they’ll be very, very hard to regain.

The former, sacked CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, said: Things don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed. I say, we need sources we can trust more than ever. We need you.

You’ve no doubt noticed that Mr. Xi of China has come to the conclusion that elections are cumbersome and unnecessary when you know who’s best suited for the job anyway. May I hazard a guess that Mr. Putin, Mr. Orbán and Mr. Erdoghan are feeling inspired by his example. Will they follow in his footsteps? Mr. Trump recently joked: “Maybe we’ll give that a shot.” I’m not so sure it was a joke. But American democracy is robust. Thanks to those enlightened men, who wrote the American constitution. If there is a god, may he bless them.

They must have thought long and hard about how to pass their values down the generations. George Washington said it beautifully: “What could be more important than to pass civic values down to the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”

It seems a lot of young people nowadays take democracy for granted, and what else can you expect when it has been around all their lives. It’s like an old arm chair to them. They’re also disappointed by it. So, it’s not surprising that some of them should be attracted by the old ideologies close to fascism and communism. But, these young people have no idea of what it would be like to live in such a political system.

I was born in the 1940s and when I was about five or six I got hold of a book I wasn’t supposed to see. The pictures are still engraved in me. The death camps, emaciated human beings. My parents talked a lot about the war. I hate fascism with every fiber in my body.

Growing up with the Soviet Union looming large and ominous close to Swedish borders, I learned to hate communism too. It was a real and tangible threat. I used to think to myself: What would I do if the Soviets invaded us? I came to the conclusion that I would rather die than live under the communist yoke.

But how do we convey this to younger generations who seem ready to experiment again? To try the same useless ideologies once more. We need you.

Civic education in public broadcasting has always been at the core of the European democratic project. Certainly, when I grew up. I might have found it boring sometimes, but it was always there. And I know it still is, but now there are so many other things competing with it today.

Nevertheless, it is crucially important that public broadcasting never ceases to point out and to show again and again that ideological alternatives to liberal democracy, from fascism to communism and from autocracy to theocracy, are as abominable today as they were in the past.

I have stood on many a taped white cross on studio floors in TV studios all around Europe, miming to the latest ABBA single. Those were the days. You only had to appear once in the biggest local show and the next day everybody would have heard your song. My colleagues today have to work much harder.

Well, it seems I will visit your TV channels again. In digital form this time. We have a new project together. Well, at least some of you are already involved. I’m talking about a big ABBA tribute show this autumn with artists from all parts of the world.

Frida, Agnetha, Benny and I had visitors from Silicon Valley last June. Techno artists, they call themselves. They photographed us from all possible angles, they made us grimace in front of cameras, they painted dots on our faces, they measured our heads. Apparently, a cranium doesn’t change with age the way the rest of your body falls apart. The measurements together with old videos and photos makes it possible for these IT wizards to create perfect copies of ABBA 1979. We thought we looked good that year.

It’s still work in progress, but they’ve come a long way and what I’ve seen so far is simply mind-boggling. These ABBAtars will sing one of Benny’s and my songs. You’ll hear the voices of ABBA coming out of the mouths of the ABBAtars. Lip synch. And you won’t be able to see that they’re not human beings. It’ll be spooky, I assure you. But great fun and no one has done it before. There is an existential dimension to explore as well. What would it be like to be young again. The wisdom that we hopefully possess now in combination with the youth of the ABBAtars.

NBC in America in partnership with the BBC have both global reach and experience of managing projects on a huge scale and they’re distributing the show. The plan is to make it a global television moment and they are now reaching out to top national and regional broadcasters like yourselves, who can be part of making it a shared experience all around the world - with simulcast transmission wherever possible. I can’t help thinking – it would be a bit like the Eurovision Song Contest. It sounds incredible, but they say it’s absolutely doable.

And what will the ABBAtars sing? I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say, but let me give you something to talk about, a clue. The title could have been the heading for this speech. You’ll understand when you hear it.

I’d like to end this speech with a plea. Trust is hard currency in this era of fake news. You have more trust than most other institutions. People believe that you’re telling the truth to the best of your abilities. Please don’t devalue that, please continue to be an institution that we can hang on to in this age of confusion

Only public service media can guarantee fair and trusted content because of the unique way it is mandated and funded. True public service media needs to be independent from commercial and governmental influences.

Continue to develop and produce broad, entertaining shows like the Eurovision Song Contest and the ABBA show I just mentioned, but never forget to educate, give insight and try to explain complex matters in an honest and scientific way. I know it’s not easy, but you guys, you - in this room. You’re the ones who can do it. You decide. We need you more than ever. Democracy itself, whatever future form it takes, needs you to promote and to defend it.

Thank you!

https://www.ebu.ch/publications/bjorn-ulvaeus-keynote-to-media-summit-2018



“#ABBA will be back in digital form in a big tribute show distributed by @BBC - a global television moment - a shared experience all around the world - a bit like @Eurovision Song Contest” - Björn Ulvaeus reveals new #VR project @ #EBUMedia Summit #Eurovision
https://twitter.com/EBU_HQ/status/986877020373159936

“#ABBA will be back in digital form in a big tribute show distributed by @BBC - a global television moment - a shared experience all around the world - a bit like @Eurovision Song Contest” - Björn Ulvaeus reveals new #VR project @ #EBUMedia Summit #Eurovision pic.twitter.com/jco1qCeCvw

— EBU (@EBU_HQ) 19 de abril de 2018

Björn in new interview about the "ABBA-tars

Abba återförenas – som ”abbatarer”
Abba.19 apr 2018
FOTO: IBL FOTOWARE
Abba.
NÖJEmindre än 2 tim sedan
I höst återförenas Abba i en stor global tv-show. Men det är inte Björn, Benny, Agnetha och Anni-Frid själva som står på scenen – utan fyra digitalt framställda ”abbatarer”.

– Vi gör det för att det är så spännande och kul, säger Björn Ulvaeus till TT.


Under årens lopp har det gång på gång spekulerats om att Abba ska återförenas. I höst blir det alltså av, men i en något annan form än vad Abba-fansen kanske hade trott.

– Vi håller på att skapa "abbatarer" just nu, berättar Björn Ulvaeus på telefon från Bryssel där han har berättat om projektet för radio- och tv-unionen EBU.

Mätte skallarna
Brittiska BBC och amerikanska NBC planerar en tv-sänd hyllningsshow till Abbas ära i höst. Tanken är att de fyra digitala kopiorna ska framträda under showen med en av gruppens låtar. I juni förra året fick Annifrid Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson och Björn Ulvaeus besök från Silicon Valley i USA. Sedan vidtog något som närmast kan beskrivas som avancerad skallmätning.

– Våra huvuden har mätts på alla håll och kanter och av det skapar man ett bibliotek av ansiktsmuskler. De som gör det kallar sig för technoartister och kommer från filmbranschen och it-branschen. Det som är spännande är att det blir ett slags digitala kopior av oss från 1979.


Varför just det året?

– Vi var tvungna att välja ett år och vi tyckte väl att vi såg bra ut det året, säger Björn Ulvaeus och skrattar.

”Helt mindboggling”
1979 var året då Abba släppte skivan ”Voulez-Vous” och påbörjade sin sista stora konsertturné över världen. Björn Ulvaeus konstaterade i sitt tal till EBU att den existentiella dimensionen av ”abbatarerna” också känns spännande att utforska. Hur är det att vara ung igen? Och hur kan man ”kombinera den visdom som vi förhoppningsvis besitter nu med 'abbatarernas' ungdom?”

– Vi har sett lite "work in progress" för ett tag sedan – och det är helt mindboggling! säger Björn Ulvaeus. Man kommer inte att kunna se att det inte är riktiga människor. Det är spännande att vara delaktig i ett projekt som ingen har kunnat göra tidigare.

Nu gör ni det i tv, men kommer man att kunna turnera med ”abbatarerna”?

– Ja, det är tanken, att det ska komma något halvår, kanske tre kvarts år efter showen. Men då kommer vi att använda olika teknologier. Dels den vi utvecklar här, men i en livesituation kanske man också använder hologram någonstans och body-doubles. Man kan göra en massa roliga grejor.

Det låter som att du har gått all in i projektet?

– Ja, det har vi alla fyra gjort. Verkligen. All in, kan man säga.

Kända artister gästar
Ännu så länge är mycket hemligt kring projektet. Det finns ännu inget datum utsatt för konserten och Björn Ulvaeus vill inte avslöja vilken Abba-låt det är som kommer att framföras i tv-showen, vilken också kommer att gästas av flera kända artister. Genom talet i EBU ger han BBC och NBC lite hjälp på traven med att locka fler tv-kanaler i Europa att sända showen.

Är det här början på en framtid där den nya tekniken ger fansen möjlighet att se fler nedlagda band och döda artister framträda ”live”?

– Jag vill inte spekulera i det. Vi gör det och det är jättekul och vi är pionjärer. Men hur det här kommer att användas, där finns det bara en gräns och det är fantasin, säger Björn Ulvaeus.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/a/ngJJAm/abba-aterforenas--som-abbatarer

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
traslation: facebook Micke A Andersson

Björn in new interview about the "ABBA-tars"
This fall, Abba reunites in a major global television show. But it's not Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid themselves who are on stage - without four digitally-produced "abbatar".
"We do it because it is so exciting and fun," says Björn Ulvaeus to TT (Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå).

Over the years, it has been repeatedly speculated that ABBA will be reunited. In the fall, it will happen, but in a slightly different form than the ABBA-fans might have believed.
"We are creating" ABBATAR" right now, explains Björn Ulvaeus on a telephone call from Brussels where he has reported on the project for the Radio and Television Union EBU.

British BBC and US NBC are planning a television broadcast tribute show to ABBA'shonor this fall. The idea is that the four digital copies will appear during the show with one of the group's songs. In June last year Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus received a visit from Silicon Valley in the United States. Then took something that could be described as advanced balding.
"Our heads have been measured in all directions and edges and create a library of facial muscles. Those who make it call themselves techno artists and come from the film industry and the IT industry. What's exciting is that there will be some kind of digital copies of us from 1979.

TT: Why that year?
"We had to choose one year and we thought we were looking good that year," says Björn Ulvaeus, laughing.
1979 was the year when ABBA released the "Voulez-Vous" record and commenced their last major concert tour of the world. Björn Ulvaeus noted in his speech to the EBU that the existential dimension of "ABBATAR" also feels exciting to explore. How is it to be young again? And how can we "combine the wisdom we hopefully possess now with the" ABBATAR" youth?"
"We've seen a little" work in progress "a while ago - and it's completely mindboggling! says Björn Ulvaeus.
"You will not be able to see that there are no real people. It's exciting to be part of a project that nobody has been able to do before.

TT: Do you do it now on television, but will you be able to tour with the "ABBATAR"?
- Yes, it's the idea that there will be half a year, maybe three quarters of a year after the show. But then we will use different technologies. Partly the one we develop here, but in a living situation, one might also use hologram somewhere and body doubles. You can do a lot of fun stuff.
TT: It sounds like you've got all the way into the project?
- Yes, we have done all four. Really. All in, you can say.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155539489770765&set=a.62337300764.75305.659900764

Chess in London, New York City and Syracuse.

ARTS Grandmaster flashiness dominates CNY Playhouse ‘Chess’ match play
ByJames MacKillopPosted on April 18, 2018 The cast of CNY Playhouse's "Chess" stand in a line across the stage as part of the performance, lit by overhead stage lights. CAST MEMBERS OF CENTRAL NEW YORK PLAYHOUSE’S CHESS. (COURTESY OF AMELIA BEAMISH)

We approach a cult musical differently from your garden-variety hit. With a hit like Guys and Dolls or South Pacific, we don’t expect surprises and are comforted by familiarity. A show cannot become a cult favorite unless it has been wounded, like with a host of savage reviews or disastrous box office, but is championed by an impassioned minority convinced against the odds of the show’s brilliance that wants us to share that vision.

Director Robert G. Searle is a cultist for the Tim Rice-ABBA musical Chess. He makes a compelling case for the show, which runs through April 28 at Shoppingtown’s Central New York Playhouse.

Part of being in the cult is remembering the show’s anfractuous history, which is more demanding than knowing all the characters in the Star Wars franchise. The key moment is the 1988 failure of the Broadway production, based on a different book (by Richard Nelson) and a hamhanded vandalizing of the score. Previous to that Chess had run for three years in London. And ultimately, history is favoring the cultists. This Syracuse production runs concurrently with revivals of the Rice version on both Broadway and London’s West End.

In a 2016 interview with the Syracuse New Times, Tim Rice described Chess as his proudest achievement. A political allegory for the Cold War during the Reagan administration, Chess is a rock opera that first appeared in a 1984 two-disc concept album, much like its Rice siblings Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita.

The score by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA sounds nothing like the bubble gum of their Mamma Mia. They might have been aiming toward Andrew Lloyd Webber, but one also hears disparate echoes from Gilbert & Sullivan and Richard Rodgers. Serious cultists hear remote allusions in the top solo “Anthem” to the ABBA song “Our Last Summer.”

In a candid program note, director Searle acknowledges that his motivation to revive Chess has long been in gestation, and it shows. He has superior voices in all the key roles, such as Paul Thompson as the loutish American Freddie Trumper, Benjamin J. Sills as layered and sympathetic Soviet Anatoly Sergievsky, and Ceara Windhausen (nearly unrecognizable in a black wig) as Florence Vassy, the woman who comes between them. Frequently dominating the scene is Steve Gamba as the whitegloved Arbiter of the matches.

Searle’s commitment to quality extends through the supporting players, including an excellent Kate Crawford as Anatoly’s wronged wife Svetlana, new face Garrett Robinson as the enigmatic Soviet coach Molokov, and Christopher James as de Courcey, his American counterpart. Confidence in Searle’s commitment is so high that five of the singers-dancers in the 14-person ensemble have been leads in recent productions here and elsewhere.

Chess was partially inspired by the highly publicized matches in the 1970s between grandmaster Bobby Fischer, one of the most toxic figures ever to appear in American public life, and the press-friendly Soviet masters, Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov. Yet Rice has made clear that the emergence of the concept album in 1984 was intended to comment on Ronald Reagan’s last eruption of Cold War rhetoric, incidentally linked to a fictionalized account of U.S.-Soviet chess matches.

Changes in the political climate led to rewrites of the show just as drastic as the unfortunate New York City opening. Freddie Trumper, despite his prominent personal failings, is far less a miscreant than Fischer was. None of the original matches were in Thailand as they are here, prompting one of the show’s best numbers, “One Night in Bangkok,” also a Top 40 smash in 1984. And Fischer did not arrive with a girlfriend.

The basis of the Chess cult is not its politics or even its piquant plot. That relies on the music, of course, and its plangent expression. Music director Abel Searor has assembled an eight-piece orchestra, including two brass players, and his keyboard can deliver both a harp and a harpsichord. From the overture and onward, the ABBA score can be gripping. Splendid as Freddie’s numbers like “Commie Newspapers” are, we see in the first act that Rice’s book has favored Florence, such as the affecting solo “Nobody’s Side,” and Anatoly’s powerhouse first-act finale, “Anthem.”

More musical riches are found in the second act, including a big solo for Freddie, “Pity the Child,” and adulterous love-making by Anatoly and Florence in “You and I.” Anatoly’s betrayed wife Svetlana, an aspect of the plot audiences may be slow to embrace, has her plaintive moment in “Someone Else’s Story.” Another winning solo is Molokov’s ironic “Soviet Machine.”

Press comments on the original London version praised its elaborate production values, impossible to reproduce in Shoppingtown. The task of evoking them falls to choreographer Shannon Tompkins. With what space she has been given, Tompkins has the ensemble, dressed in either black or white, depict the conflict on the chessboard, with arrogant rooks and bishops knocking down hapless pawns. It’s one of the cleverest things she has ever done.

Thirty years after bombing on Broadway, Chess is having its day, simultaneously in London, New York City and Syracuse.

https://www.syracusenewtimes.com/grandmaster-flashiness-dominates-cny-playhouse-chess-match-play/

As ‘Chess’ returns to the stage, its makers recall the day their baby bombed on Broadway.

As ‘Chess’ returns to the stage, its makers recall the day their baby bombed on Broadway.



Opening gambit: Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson with their wives Lena Kallersjo and Mona Norklit on opening night at London’s Prince Edward Theatre, May 14 1986 CREDIT: ALAN DAVIDSON

Dominic Cavendish reports
Red Square, Moscow, February 1983. It’s the early hours of the morning, at the height of the Cold War, and one of the most famous pop stars in the world, Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus, is shambling back to his hotel after a long night spent drinking and dancing. “I’d had too many beers and I decided to relieve myself against one of the buildings,” he recalls. “But as I did so, a group of soldiers came storming outside carrying guns and shouting. I thought, ‘OK, it’s the Gulag next, something terrible is going to happen’. But as they came closer, one of them pointed at my face and said, “Are you…?” Luckily, I had a bunch of photos of Abba in my pocket. I produced one, signed it, smiled… and all was well!”

Ulvaeus was in Moscow on a fact-finding mission with fellow Abba frontman Benny Andersson. The lyricist Tim Rice, fresh from his successes with Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, had invited them to collaborate on a new stage musical – Chess, an audacious fable about the tense East-West stand-off, combining the era’s politicised US/USSR grandmaster chess tournaments with an anguished love story played out across the Iron Curtain. Both Andersson and Ulvaeus, who had given their final live performances with Abba three years earlier, had leapt at the chance of a fresh departure.

Fast forward to April 28 1988, and Ulvaeus is reeling in a different way. Two years after its premiere in the West End (where it would run until 1989), Chess had just opened on Broadway – to breathtakingly stinking reviews. Frank Rich, the critic from The New York Times known as “the Butcher of Broadway”, was so remorseless (“War is hell, and, for… the audience, Chess sometimes comes remarkably close”) that his review would later be seen as a factor in the show’s early closure two months later, a $6 million (£4.2 million) flop. Ulvaeus, dumbstruck by the vitriol, was rushed to hospital suffering from chest pains. “It was one of the worst experiences of my professional life,” he says now. “A crushing defeat. It bombed completely.”


Today, as Chess prepares for its first major London revival since that 1986 West End run – in a semi-staged production at the Coliseum – Ulvaeus, Andersson and Rice can look back on that experience comfortable in the knowledge that they have all gone on to achieve great commercial success into their 70s. Rice’s involvement with Chess left him financially wiped out but subsequent, lucrative triumphs with Disney’s Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King more than compensated. Meanwhile, thanks in no small part to the stage and screen success of Mamma Mia! (a movie sequel of which arrives this summer), Abba continues to be a money-spinning, generation-spanning global phenomenon. “It’s incredible to us that those songs are still popular,” Andersson enthuses. “Unbelievable,” Ulvaeus agrees. “We’re still talking about Abba and our last time all together live on stage was in Tokyo, in 1980, I think – so long ago.”

And yet it’s clear that for all three men, Chess involved so much love, labour and heartbreak it remains unfinished business.

“There were many problems along the way,” sighs Andersson, who might pass for a professor of philosophy with his grey beard and intense, bespectacled gaze. “The idea of doing a musical about chess was so boring. I said, ‘Yes, that’s the challenge we need!’” The softly spoken Ulvaeus agrees: “The characters could have been ice hockey players for all I cared. What really drew me in was the Cold War. The Soviet Union always loomed large and ominous over us in Sweden. I used to wonder what I would do if they invaded. My conclusion was that I would rather die than live under the Communist yoke.” Did Andersson feel that way? He shrugs. “For Bjorn it was a real threat – but I always thought, ‘Well, we have Finland between us!’”

As with Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar before it, the music for Chess was first released as an album, in 1984, before the production was taken to the stage. Nevertheless, the plot for a full-blown musical was already in place: it centred on a brash American grandmaster, inspired by Bobby Fischer, and a defecting Soviet grandmaster (a cross between Boris Spassky, whose Reykjavik World Chess Championship match with Fischer in 1972 was a Cold War showdown moment, and Viktor Korchnoi, who defected to the West). Romantically “defecting” from the American to the Russian was the heroine Florence (a part conceived for Elaine Paige, then Rice’s lover) while the Russian’s spurned wife Svetlana helped to complicate relations further.


The double-album, a mixture of Abba-esque pop, rock and anthemic belters, was an instant hit. One Night in Bangkok sold three million copies and I Know Him So Well – the meeting between Florence and Svetlana, as sung by Paige and Barbara Dickson – topped the UK charts for four weeks. Plans to press ahead with a stage show on both sides of the Atlantic became unstoppable and the flamboyant Michael Bennett, who had made his name with A Chorus Line in 1975, was signed up to direct. In his 2015 book Razzle Dazzle, a colourful portrait of Broadway in the Eighties, American journalist Michael Riedel writes: “Bennett was usually high when he worked on Chess. He would do lines of cocaine on his office desk.” His ideas took on extravagant proportions – envisaging a giant chess-board set that could tilt and shift, becoming a mountain range or a hotel interior. The piece de resistance would be a “vidiwall”, comprising 128 TV monitors, to relay everything from individual chess moves to contextualising history.

Tragically, Bennett was never able to oversee his vision on stage. Shortly before rehearsals for the London premiere began, he was diagnosed with Aids. He abruptly departed the production and died a year later, of a related cancer. “It was tragic about Michael Bennett but it was a tragedy for the show, too,” says Andersson. “Everything was in place, and we never quite found out what his ideas were. It might have been staggering. We will never know.”

The immediate consequence of Bennett’s departure was, says Rice, “an atmosphere of panic”. Andersson agrees: “It was a very testing time”. Trevor Nunn came to the rescue, starting work only two months before the first previews. “The costs doubled to £4 million,” says Rice. “Because Trevor brought in new elements and his own team, we were almost paying for two musicals.” Despite the outlay – which at the time made Chess the most expensive show in West End history – the production was bedevilled by technical hitches: the chess-board set refused to rotate, and the editing for the “vidiwall” was sluggish.


Then previews threw up another challenge – audiences responded far more warmly to the first half – triggering urgent rewrites, even as the performance was under way. According to the show’s orchestrator Anders Eljas: “While the audience was watching the first act, we had 10 notators on their knees [in the foyer] rewriting the music.” Can Rice verify this account? “It’s not impossible,” he says. “There was no let-up.” Andersson chips in, laughing: “Do you remember on the opening night, the music started but the curtain didn’t go up?” “Didn’t it?” Rice replies. “I think I just headed straight for the bar.”

Yet the 11th hour revisions averted disaster and glowing reviews sustained a three-year run. Michael Ball, who was in Les Miserables round the corner at the Palace, and joins this new revival – playing Anatoly – remembers it well. “You knew Chess would have a decent run,” he says. “The score was amazing. And the set sounded extraordinary. Enough people were going: ‘I have to see this’.”

Why didn’t the same rules apply in New York? For the American production, changes were made – and not all for the better. The show was reconceived as a “book musical” and American playwright Richard Nelson was brought in by Nunn, who also wanted a different scenic approach, involving moving towers. Since these proved almost impossible to computer-operate, men were placed inside them to wheel them around, but they kept bumping into each other. A final nail in the coffin was the decision to make Florence an American and bring the action up to date. “The Cold War was fading away – it kept having to be written to take account of perestroika,” says Rice. “Everybody got it wrong.”

Rice was reportedly so furious that he was quoted as saying he was going to punch Nunn. Today, he’s a model of diplomacy. “I wouldn’t have said we were as one but the director is the boss. You had to agree because it might have worked.” It didn’t though? He shakes his head. “The drubbing was expected.”

Yet, 30 years on, Rice, Ulvaeus and Andersson are taking another chance on Chess. Why can’t they let it alone? Well, to borrow a line from Abba, a lot of fans have come up in the intervening years to say thank you for the music; the Chess soundtrack remains admired. And besides, this new version (which features the ENO’s orchestra and chorus) will, under the supervision of feted musicals director Laurence Connor, strip things to their essentials. “At last,” says Rice, grinning “we’ll get back to basics, and to the best of it”. It’s a risky move – but it might just work.

Chess is at the Coliseum, London WC2, from April 26 to June 2.



Chess first ran at the Prince Edward Theatre in 1986 CREDIT: REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/chess-bombed-broadway-one-worst-experiences-life/

Björn Ulvaeus at the Salesforce Sweden annual Conference in Stockholm

Björn Ulvaeus at the Salesforce Sweden annual conference in Stockholm.
10 04 2018
From The Official International ABBA Fan Club: "Full speach Björn gave at the Salesforce Sweden Annual User Conference in Stockholm. He speaks about several of his ventures, including Pop House Hotel and ABBA The Museum. He is also very excited about the progress on 'digitizing' the 1979 versions of the four ABBA members and confirmed that these would go on a world tour with a live band in 2019".

https://www.facebook.com/officialabbafanclub/videos/10156559642137780/