Astral Weeks Live! Recorded!

Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl, which documents Morrison’s historic in-concert reworking of his seminal 1968 album and is due for release Feb. 10, was recorded over two nights at the venue last November.

The concerts, featuring an orchestral string section and a band that included some of the musicians who played with Morrison on the album 40 years ago, marked the first time the singer ever performed Weeks in its entirety.

The shows gave the singer, who only held one rehearsal before the actual performance, a chance to do something he’d wanted to do for some time.

“The Hollywood Bowl concerts gave me a welcome opportunity to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be,” Morrison said. “There are certain dynamics you can get in live recordings that you just cannot get in a studio recording. I love listening to live recordings. You get the whole thing right there, unabridged, raw and in the moment. There was a distinct alchemy happening on that stage in Hollywood. I felt it.”

To rework Weeks, Morrison created new sections for each song. For the recording, he insisted that there be no post-production engineering, making the disc as close to the live performance as possible.

Both Bowl shows were filmed in hi-def and will be released as a DVD concert.

Morrison will repeat his live performance of Weeks at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City Feb. 27-28.

The singer, accompanied by two different bands, will play two sets per show: one featuring Astral Weeks cover to cover and the other featuring rarely played songs from his extensive catalog.