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Here arrives Rhymin ‘Simon. It is not a phrase that we would have imagined again, in the context of a concert tour, after Paul Simon concluded his official farewell tour seven years ago. There were reasons to believe that I had valid reasons to mark that, as shown in the show shows, and not as the type of falsified retirement that so many artists charge and then renounce. But it has found solutions to the problems that could have kept it out of the stage. When a five night stand began at the Walt Disney Concert Hall this week, Simon was a full 40 shows show at his output of “quiet celebration” of 2025. And he was playing … yes, softer (as promised in the title of the tour!) But, really, without decreasing. We have never had a better reason to rejoice that someone returned to his word.

You can see the nickname “A Quiet Celebration Tour” and ask, as his first question: well, how a lot Quiet? And the answer is: not terribly much. You should not confuse this with a totally acoustic tour, although that is the tone that is taken before the intermediate of the program, when Simon and his band reproduce their most recent album, “Seven Salms” of 2023, in its entirety suite style, mostly solemn and without much in tempo or electricity. But then, in the second act and Fartes, you get 15 catalog selections, including some melodies that count as Looping of Simon’s standards. The night becomes a party, despite its best intentions to keep it down.

There is a subtlety to what makes this tour so successful that it really has something to do with the volume or appearance of it. Simon has up to 11 players on stage at the same time, and during the classics, everyone is playing more or less the same very busy parts that they would have played before, in a “Graceland” or a “fresh and great river” or even an “July and July in the courtyard of the school.” However, the arrangements have been calibrated so that the strongest songs seem very tensely marked, almost imperceptibly, so that they coincide with what could be a bit different for the leader this time. Any sense of that will not be a complete surprise for the audience, because Simon has been opened about his auditory problems, stating that only through a system of elaborate and advanced stage monitors has felt that he could reasonably tour. There is also the question of his voice, which is a bit softer with age. It is as if everything had been finely tuned to allow Simon to act in his age (which is 83), without making any incitement on rich and disability actions.

Simon refers to the performance of “Seven Psalmos” as “the first half”, although, by real volume, it is well below that. It is safe to guess that the majority of the audience is not familiar with the album, and this is where the reserve of arts of arts such as Disney Hall is useful, since even attendees who have not come to see the symphony there can still intuit quite easily that the place lends itself to a kind of silence and some focused care skills. The folia “seven psalms” exists more or less in the meditative, impressionist and spiritual end of its spectrum, with the exception of “my professional forgiveness”, which comes in the middle of the suite and lands with a feeling of playful blues. Simon is dealing with the concept of God and exploring non -reconciled relationships in the subsequent chapters of life, and cannot be easily understood in the first listening. But perhaps the performances on this tour inspire many more people to see one of the most unfairly overlooked albums over 2023, one that has exactly the ambition and personal meaning you expect from a great artist who do not want to enter that good night.

The seven song titles of this album appeared useful on an aerial screen when its number emerged, to offer a transition indication with nothing as gauche as actually stopping music for applause. But the album is really more than seven numbers, since the opening song, “The Lord”, gets several repetitions without time as the suite courses advance. That single song, in its many iterations, tells how a significant work of Simon of the last days, while reflecting on all possible ways of looking at the Lord, from Pastor to demolition ball, incorporating the most Christian and irreverent images possible. By the time they sing everything, he will not know exactly if the singer is a believer or hardened skeptic, but you will know that Simon, the mystical poet and the baseball nut, has covered all the bases.

His wife, Edie Brickell, went out to the guest in the last two parts of the song cycle, “The Sacred Harp” and “Wait”, as apparently does it every night on the tour. She stops on the opposite side of the Simon stage, to sing her parts, but with a musical spirit, at least, they are as close as the two owls were in charge of the cover of the album “Seven Salmos”. A conceptual album that begins to be all over God finally ends in something more knowable in this life, the link with another human being, and when they sing “amen” in harmony to finish the cycle, it seems that it has to do with Simon facing eternity. and with putting a divine seal in Brickell’s durable love story.

And then, the second “medium” longest reward for fans for any patience with that opening with a set that hits all Simon Fandom’s pleasure centers. It hits almost the great obvious successes (although there is no “bridge on water with problems” or “you can call”)) and find some deeper cuts (such as “St. Judy’s Comet”, a 50 -year song of “There Gone Rhymin ‘Simon” that apparently has even made a dozen before this tour).

The band made much more training in some of these old people than in the most minimalist and hypnotic material “seven psalms”. The presence of two side veterans in the cast of Simon made especially memorable and even moving moments. The bassist, Bakithi Kumalo, was presented as the last surviving member of the original Simon South African “Graceland” band, and his link with the most essential era of the leader (possibly) was invaluable with some exclusive vocalizations. Meanwhile, Steve Gadd, one of the three drummers or percussionists in the whole, returned to the fold since the early 1970s to play what he could tell as the most famous drum part of pop music, in the bis of “509 ways to leave his lover.” And if that is not worth the price of the entrance …

The horns and strings had their place, mainly the last one, with the Viola Caleb Burhans player and the Vipers Eugene Friesen manage to sound like almost a quartet of kronos sometimes. (Friesen’s interlaced instruments with Simon’s acoustic guitar during a portion stripped of “Slid Slidin ‘Away” was a lovely example). Nothing was too radically reorganized, although it could be noted that “Boundward Bound” had subtly transformed into a song more than a country range, between the sound of the brushes brushes and Mick Rossi’s peak line.

The screen in this half was used for occasional photographic illustration instead of song titles of the previous act: if you ever wanted to see the real photo that inspired “Rene and Georgette Magritte with her dog after war”, there you had it. And “The deceased great Johnny Ace”, who had an unusually expansive spoiled introduction of Simon, climax with the view of Johnny Ace, Jfk and John Lennon next to each other on the big screen, each of them with “Johnny Ace” as the title under his name.

Brickell made an appearance back, entering from the wings to contribute a single whistle to “Julio and Julio Down Behingy Holyard”. In this song, which served as climax for the main set, it was as if the night had been the equivalent in the “Benjamin Button” concert, starting with Simon in his advanced years looking at The Gran Beyond and ending with him as a school.

But Denouement grew again, with Simon finally only on stage with only its acoustic guitar for the company, taking things to a point of origin in a different way with a final interpretation of “the sound of silence.” Just as we were all born in dust and dust, we will return, so it is silent, perhaps for any of us, but especially for a Paul Simon who (along with Garfunkel) had that existential anthem as his first success No. 1 60 years ago.

To return to a hot question, or at least one that was in the mind of fans before this tour began: what is Simon’s sound at this time, his singing voice, particularly? When he appeared in the special “SNL 50” recently, there was a certain alarm that he did not seem as young as, well, his duo companion Sabrina Carpenter. Or, to give the most credit scofers, as robust as he did even on his tours of the early twenty -first century, before retirement. The answer to that should be reassuring, for anyone who has not yet trapped the tour and is thinking of scoring a resale ticket before everything is over. The best way to describe it is that, perhaps the first 60 seconds of the show, it can be affected by how Simon’s voice sounds a little more fragile, at this age … and then, after that brief adjustment period, you forget it. It is rare to notice many high notes that have been reduced for age, and you never have to worry about losing notes. (And it didn’t seem worse, wear for having undergone back surgery for acute pain that forced him to cancel a couple of previous shows … the only reference to having been under the knife being a recognition at the top of the program that he had had “the most crazy week.”

Then, in other words, in the best way, it sounds like an 83 -year -old choir. How lucky do we unexpectedly share your sanctuary again?

Setlist for Paul Simon at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, July 9, 2025:

Set 1: Seven Psalms
“The Lord”
“Love is like a braid”
“My professional opinion”
“Your forgiveness”
“Volcanes Trail”
“The sacred harp”
“Wait”

Established 2:
“Graceland”
“Slide sliding”
“Train in the distance”
“Boundsward Bound”
“The late great Johnny Ace”
“Comet of San Judy”
“Under African skies”
“Rene and Georgette Magritte with his dog after the war”
“Rewrite”
“Spiritual voices”
“The fresh and fresh river”
“Julio and I in the courtyard”

Turn on:
“50 ways to leave your lover”
“The boxer”
“The sound of silence”

The remaining dates on Paul Simon’s 2025 tour:
July 12 Disney Hall, Los Angeles, Ca
July 14 Disney Hall, Los Angeles, Ca
July 16 Disney Hall, Los Angeles, Ca
July 19 Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, Ca
July 21 Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, Ca
July 22 Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, Ca
July 25 The Orpheum, Vancouver BC
July 26 The Orpheum, Vancouver BC
July 28 The Orpheum, Vancouver BC
July 31 Benoya Hall, Seattle, WA
August 2 Benoya Hall, Seattle, WA
August 3 Benoya Hall, Seattle, WA