SHAPE SHIFTER, THE NEW
ALBUM FROM SANTANA, DEBUTS AT #16 ON BILLBOARD’S
TOP-SELLING ALBUMS CHART
CARLOS SANTANA TO LAUNCH THE SHAPE SHIFTER TOUR 2012 WITH NORTH AMERICAN DATES BEGINNING JULY 7
LOS ANGELES, CA, May 23, 2012: Shape
Shifter, the new album from Carlos
Santana and the Santana Band, debuted this week at #16 in the Top 20 on the Billboard 200 top-selling albums
chart, and at #2 on the indie chart. It is Santana’s
13th Top 20 album debut, and the
group’s 30th top 200 charting release overall.
It follows up 2010’s Guitar
Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time, which made Santana the only act in Billboard
history, other than the Rolling Stones, to score at least one Top Ten album in each decade from the
1960s through the present.
Released May 15, 2012, Shape Shifter is the first for Carlos Santana’s new label, Starfaith Records. The 13-song set is
an instrumental tour de force long awaited by fans (one song has vocals by Santana’s lead vocalists Andy Vargas and Tony Lindsay). The album also features Chester Thompson (keyboards), Dennis Chambers (drums), Benny
Rietveld (bass), Salvador Santana
(keyboards), Raul Rekow (congas),
and Karl Perazzo (percussion).
Carlos dedicated the album to Native American Indians,
acknowledging Australia’s 2008 apology to the Aborigines, and President Obama’s
signing of the 2009 Native American Apology Resolution. He says,
“I encourage any and all countries (that have not as yet done so) to
acknowledge the first people of their land, and make this a collective global
effort.”
Earlier this month, Santana
began a two-year residency at the House
of Blues at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The first string of dates for An Intimate
Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live--Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
runs through early June. Following the
May 2 opening, Robin Leach wrote for The Las Vegas Sun, “Carlos
puts on such a spectacular show of guitar mastery, and you’d have to be a
member of his band to get any closer because his spell of sound wraps over you,
around you and gets inside you. Incredible!”
Santana takes to the road this summer, launching
the “Shape Shifter Tour 2012” with North American dates beginning July 7.
Later in the month, Santana will perform a special series of
shows co-headlining with The Allman Brothers.
Since Santana emerged from the
San Francisco Bay Area music scene in the 1960s, the group has sold more than
100 million records, reached more than 100 million fans at concerts worldwide,
and been inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame. Santana has won 10 GRAMMYs, including a record-tying nine for a single project,
1999’s Supernatural (including Album of the Year and Record of the Year
for “Smooth”). Among other honors, Carlos
Santana is #20 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”—“Santana's crystalline tone and clean arcing sustain make him the rare
instrumentalist who can be identified in just one note.”
For
more information: www.santana.com
Shape Shifter tour dates:
July 7 Grand Casino Mille Lacs Hinckley,
MN
July 9 Ravinia Festival Highland
Park, IL
July 10 Fraze Pavilion for the
Performing Arts Kettering,
OH
July 11 Toledo Zoo Amphitheater Toledo,
OH
July 13 Soaring Eagle Casino
Resort Mount
Pleasant, MI
July 14 Molson Canadian
Amphitheatre West
Toronto, ON
July 15 DTE Energy Music Theatre Clarkston,
MI
July 17 Bank of America Pavilion Boston, MA
July 18 Meadowbrook U.S. Cellular
Pavilion Gilford, NH
July
20-21 Borgata Spa &
Resort Event Center Atlantic City, NJ
Santana dates with the Allman
Brothers (* = Santana closes show):
July 22 Darien Lake Performing
Arts Center Darien
Lake, NY
July 24 Nikon at Jones Beach
Theater Wantagh,
NY
July 25 PNC Bank Arts Center Holmdel,
NJ*
July 27 Saratoga Performing Arts
Center Saratoga,
NY*
July 28 The Comcast Theatre Hartford,
CT
July 30 Merriweather Post
Pavilion Columbia,
MD*
