Ed O'Brien - An Evening With... Blue Morpho

Ed O'Brien brings An Evening With... Blue Morpho to Ulster Hall on Monday 19 October, as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival. It's the Radiohead guitarist playing under his own name, and the show centres on his second solo album, Blue Morpho, which came out on 22 May 2026 via Transgressive.

Rather than recreating the record exactly as it sounds on the CD, O'Brien has set this up as a fluid, immersive experience that evolves in the moment. He's not playing it as a set of fixed songs; instead, the whole thing is led by him and his band, drawing on the expansive, exploratory spirit of Sly and the Family Stone, Miles Davis and Phish. It's a way of taking the studio material and letting it breathe and shift live, rather than just running through the tracks.

He's not doing it alone. He'll be joined by musical director Dave Okumu and a collective of musicians who played on the album's recording sessions, so the people on stage are the same ones who helped build the record in the first place. Critics have called the album strikingly personal and a majestic entry point to his music, and this is the live version of that.

Tickets are £49.50 with a £3.25 fee, and the venue advises age 14+. The show starts at 19:30 at Ulster Hall, and tickets are non-refundable.