Kayak cancel summer festival shows

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Kayak have withdrawn from Night Of The Prog and Midsummer Prog but will release live double album in spring 2020

Kayak
(Image credit: InsideOut Music)

Kayak have announced they're no longer performing at this year’s Night Of The Prog in Germany or Midsummer Prog in the Netherlands as leader Ton Scherpenzeel continues to recover from a heart attack. Scherpenzeel was forced to cancel Kayak’s tour with The Flower Kings when he fell ill in October 2019. 

‘I am doing okay,” says Scherpenzeel, “but I do not feel capable to give full power again. And for me, with Kayak it’s all or nothing. Can’t do it with the brakes on. And I am not going to force myself and stipulate a deadline now. No one’s going to benefit from that, least of all me.”

Meanwhile, the band’s management have announced that the delayed live double album Kayak Live 2019, will be released via Bandcamp in March. More details will follow nearer the time.

The recordings will be the first release since 2018’s studio album Seventeen which marked the return of the quirky Dutch band that originally formed in 1973.

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Natasha Scharf
Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.