<\/p>\n
The historic Castro Theatre in San Francisco is reopening next year \u2014\u00a0and they got a queer music icon to do the honors of inaugurating it. On Tuesday, Sam Smith announced that they will bring their To Be Free concert residency<\/a> to San Francisco for a run of eight shows next February.<\/p>\n \u201cI love San Francisco, and The Castro, especially, has been so central to the Queer community here over the years,\u201d Smith said in a press release. \u201cThese shows will also celebrate the official reopening, so it\u2019s truly an honor to become part of this iconic venue\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Smith is scheduled to perform at the Castro Theatre on Feb. 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, and 21.<\/p>\n The Castro, which first opened in 1922 as a movie palace, temporarily closed its doors in early 2024 to undergo extensive renovations. These renovations included restorations to its iconic neon sign, the installation of new chandeliers, a new cooling and heating system, additional restrooms, and improvements to ADA accessibility for patrons.<\/p>\n To celebrate the announcement of the new shows \u2014 with tickets on sale Oct. 7 at 10 a.m. PT \u2014 Smith also released a cover of Bill Withers\u2019 \u201cAin\u2019t No Sunshine.\u201d<\/p>\n The video features Smith walking through the Castro Theatre mid-renovation, strolling the streets of San Francisco\u2019s historic queer district, and finally standing among queer fans outside the lit-up theatre, where Smith collects tickets at the entrance.<\/p>\n Smith is currently hosting their New York City residency for \u201cTo Be Free<\/a>\u201d at the Warsaw. They have shows scheduled for 12 dates in October, six in November, and six more in December. The residency runs \u2014 now set for NY and SF \u2014 celebrate Smith\u2019s single of the same name, \u201cTo Be Free.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never had a recording experience like I did making this song. It\u2019s one vocal-and-guitar take from start to finish \u2014 one live performance of me and my friend\u00a0Simon [Aldred]\u00a0in a pure state of music and expression,\u201d they said of the song. \u201cI wrote it five years ago while writing my last album,\u00a0Gloria, and then parked it because I knew it was not a song for that album. It was created during a time in my life where I became free within myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The historic Castro Theatre in San Francisco is reopening next year \u2014\u00a0and they got a queer music icon to do the honors of inaugurating it. On Tuesday, Sam Smith announced that they will bring their To Be Free concert residency to San Francisco for a run of eight shows next February. \u201cI love San Francisco, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2061239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[384450,384451,307421,310535],"class_list":["post-2061236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-castro-theatre","tag-queer-music","tag-sam-smith","tag-san-francisco"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Sam-Smith-Will-Bring-Their-\u2018To-Be-Free-Residency-to.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2061236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2061240,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061236\/revisions\/2061240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2061239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2061236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2061236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2061236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}