First Night is offering Premium Packages for exciting headliners in world-class venues. Your purchase includes a First Night button good for general admission to all First Night events. Premium Seating is located in a reserved section of performance venues, and is approximately one-third of the available seating; seating for First Night button-holders is available in the remaining two-thirds of the venue and is first-come, first-served.

HOW TO BUY A PREMIUM PACKAGE
Premium Packages will be available for sale over the telephone at 617-542-1399 with a charge card, or in person at our office at 36 Bromfield St., Boston, from 9am-5pm daily. Sales of Premium Packages will end at 5pm on SUNDAY, DECEMBER 30.

HOW TO PICK UP YOUR PREMIUM PACKAGE
Customers who purchase premium packages between December 27th and 30th may pick up their buttons and lanyards in person at 36 Bromfield Street until 4pm on Monday, December 31.  After that, buttons and lanyards will be available at the corresponding venues only, beginning at 7pm.

The Magnetic Fields at Symphony Hall
7:30 pm Doors
8:00 pm – Tanya Donelly
9:00 pm – Magnetic Fields

The Magnetic Fields are the music of songwriter- producer- multi instrumentalist Stephin Merritt. In their two decade career, which began in Boston and then relocated to New York City, the band has released ten albums, including their seminal 3-disc masterwork “69 Love Songs.” That album, released in 1999, continues to be celebrated as one of pop music’s great achievements; Tim Page described it as “an encyclopedic, flabbergastingly ambitious, opera-length work that riffed off everybody from Cole Porter to Steve Reich, Gilbert and Sullivan to Kurt Weill –(and) established Stephin Merritt as one of the leading composers of his generation.” Stephin Merritt arranges and produces all his albums, playing many of the instruments as well. Additional instrumentation is provided by his band members: cellist Sam Davol, guitarist John Woo, percussionist/pianist Claudia Gonson, and singer Shirley Simms. The band has been touring throughout 2012 to support their new album, “Love at the Bottom of the Sea,” (Merge Records). This will be their First Night debut

Lee Fields & the Expressions at NEC’s Jordan Hall
7:30 Doors – Cultures of Soul (DJ)
8:00 pm – Jenny Dee & the Deelinquents
9:00 pm – Lee Fields

There aren’t too many artists making soul music today who had a release in 1969, back when R&B was first beginning to give the drummer some. Lee Fields, however, is one such artist–or maybe he’s better labeled a phenomenon. Since the late 60’s, the North Carolina native has amassed a prolific catalog of albums and has toured and played with such legends as Kool and the Gang, Sammy Gordon and the Hip-Huggers, O.V Wright, Darrell Banks, and Little Royal. With a career spanning 43 years, releases on 12 different record labels, and having toured the world over with his raucous-yet-tender voice, it’s mind-blowing that the music he’s making today with Brooklyn’s own Truth & Soul Records is the best of his career. With a catalogue that ranges from James Brown-style funk to lo-fi blues to contemporary Southern soul to collaborations with French house DJ/producer Martin Solveig, Lee Fields has done it all. Today, with The Expressions–Truth & Soul’s house band, Lee Fields continues to evolve, enmeshed into the group’s sweeping, string-laden, cinematic soul sound. Their first full-length together, My World, released in June 2009 on Truth & Soul, was called “one smoking mother of an old-sound soul record” and a “throwback done right” by Pitchfork. Treacherous followed in 2011, with Faithful Man, which paired Fields with the Truth & Soul house band the Expressions, arriving in 2012.

John Scofield’s Überjam at Berklee Performance Center
7:00 pm Doors
7:30 pm – Matthew Halpin’s Earwax Control
8:45 pm – John Scofield and Überjam

First Night is pleased to host the first reunion show of jazz guitar master John Scofield with his legendary Überjam. 2013 will reunite this legendary band both on the road and in the studio.This group pioneered Scofield’s fusing of jazz, funk and electronic music to become one of the defining bands of his career. The original Überjam record was released in 2002 with Up All Night the following year – recordings that documented Scofield’s fruitful collaboration with guitarist/computer manipulator Avi Bortnick, drummer Adam Deitch and bassist Andy Hess. The group will be joined in the studio this winter by drummers Louis Cato and Adam Deitch for a release due out in May on Emarcy/Universal, before hitting the road for the remainder of 2013. The superstar guitarist is a 1973 alumnus of Berklee. This performance, a partnership between First Night, Berklee College of Music and 89.7 WGBH, will be broadcast live in Boston on 89.7 and on stations across the country as part of NPR’s annual New Year’s Eve broadcast “Toast of the Nation.”

The LogMeIn Midnight Fireworks on Boston Harbor
12:00 am

The skies above Boston Harbor will be transformed into a brilliant tapestry of color, light, and sound when the clocks strike twelve. A complete sensory experience unlike anything else, this spectacular display is especially created for First Night Boston by Zambelli Fireworks.

For the complete 2013 First Night schedule, click here.