Bio

The Black Jacket Symphony on Tour

Straight out of Alabama to your stage, get ready to hear all your favorites as you have never heard them before and catch Black Jacket Symphony live! From Mozart and The Beatles, to Pink Floyd, Prince and Michael Jackson, the Black Jacket Symphony perform your favorite classic albums -- note for note and sound for sound -- in a live setting. Making their debut in 2009 performing to a hyped audience at WorkPlay in Birmingham, the Black Jacket Symphony have since sold out venues and halls with thousands of screaming fans. May through September 2022 is packed with concerts, and the Black Jacket Symphony is set to rock the hearts of fans of classic rock music across the nation.

Over the past 10 years, the Black Jacket Symphony have brought venues like the Aztec Theatre to capacity, performing over 35 classic rock albums, and bringing a pumped-up night of entertainment to over a million music lovers across the U.S. The group of hand-picked, black jacket-adorning musicians changes based on the album being performed, and no sonic detail is overlooked, with the musicians doing whatever it takes to reproduce the album, but give it an intriguing new take. It's always a full night of electrifying rock and roll magic when the Black Jacket Symphony come to town. Yearning for a visual experience unlike any other, fans from all over the country flock to their shows, and once you see one, you won't miss another! Get your tickets today.

The Black Jacket Symphony Live in Concert

Founded in 2009 by guitarist J. Willoughby and his partner and technical director Jason Rogoff, the Black Jacket Symphony comprises several groups of musicians dedicated to recreating a specific classic album. Though their live shows are built around performing covers of classic rock albums, in an interview with The Daily Times, Willoughby says that the Black Jacket Symphony is not a tribute band. Willoughby noted that the difference is that the Black Jacket Symphony is all about the music they're playing and not about the musicians themselves. Various Black Jacket Symphony ensembles have recreated an estimated 38 classic albums over the course of their careers.

For shows in 2018, they focused on seven classic recordings in particular -- The Beatles' Abbey Road, Queen's A Night at the Opera, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Damn the Torpedoes, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Journey's Escape, Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV, the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, and AC/DC's Back in Black. The Black Jacket Symphony's fanbase has grown over the years well beyond Birmingham. They now have a strong base in both Alabama (Huntsville, Montgomery, Mobile, and Chattanooga) and Kentucky (Lexington), while their local fanbase remains strong.

In 2014, to mark Black Jacket Symphony's fifth anniversary, Willoughby and friends presented a trio of concerts at the WorkPlay theater in Birmingham, playing music that also commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four's U.S. debut, focusing on the albums Rubber Soul and Revolver.

In 2014 for an article on Alabama.com, Willoughby was asked about one of his memorable moments with the Black Jacket Symphony. He said, "Being on stage in front of a sold-out crowd at the Alabama Theater, which is a venue I put on a very high pedestal. The encore of the evening was 'Goodnight.' It's a song that I have been singing to my daughter every night before bed, and she was in the crowd of 2,200 people. The moment suddenly hit me, and I quickly had to learn to sing with the biggest lump in my throat that I have ever had."