Shape Shifter Debuts at #16 on Billboard’s Top-Selling Albums Chart!
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*