[Cover photo credit to Sam McMahon]
The 2023 David Bowie World Fan Convention will be held on June 17-18, 2023 at New York City’s Terminal 5. The convention has recently made their first announcements of special guest speakers and presenters.
Some of the guests present at the event will include producer Tony Visconti, whose partnership with Bowie across five decades spawned fourteen classic albums from 1969’s Space Oddity to 2016’s Blackstar.
Joining Tony are other long-time collaborators including pianist Mike Garson, whose association with Bowie spans 30 years from Aladdin Sane to Reality, and guitarist and bandleader Carlos Alomar, a veteran of eleven albums and the co-writer of Bowie’s first US number 1 single, “Fame”. Alomar will be reunited with his bandmate George Murray, the bass guitarist who played with Alomar on two world tours and six albums including the Berlin trilogy.
Other guest speakers include guitarist Kevin Armstrong, who played on “Absolute Beginners” and led Bowie’s band at Live Aid; Carmine Rojas, who played bass on the classic Let’s Dance album and the Serious Moonlight tour; multi-instrumentalist and Earthling co-producer Mark Plati; Tin Machine producer Tim Palmer; and performance artist Joey Arias, who appeared alongside Klaus Nomi during Bowie’s groundbreaking Saturday Night Live performance in 1979.
A sold-out event, the first ever David Bowie World Fan Convention in June 2022 gathered 1,500 fans in Liverpool, England from as far afield as Japan and the US to meet each other and celebrate David Bowie. Moderated by author and Bowie expert Nicholas Pegg (The Complete David Bowie) who returns for the second convention, The David Bowie World Fan Convention is an immersive experience for attendees.
2023’s U.S. edition of the convention dedicated to all things Bowie coincides with both the 40th anniversary of his Let’s Dance album and the 50th anniversary of his iconic Aladdin Sane. 2023’s event will include an array of talks, meet-and-greets, live performances, and, of course, the Bowie Ball, where attendees don costumes and make-up reflecting their favorite eras from Bowie’s career.
