David Bowie
Flowers, candles and pictures of Bowie are laid under the mural in Brixton Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

David Bowie fans in the UK will be disappointed to learn that the funeral of the legend who was born in Brixton, South London, will be held in the US where he lived with his family. The 69-year-old singer died on 10 January in his New York home, two days after his birthday and just after the launch of his album Blackstar following a battle with liver cancer.

A memorial concert is also being held to honour him with Hello magazine reporting that the event will take place at Carnegie Hall in New York on 31 March. Bowie made his debut at Carnegie Hall in September 1972 as part of his first US tour.

We remember David Bowie who made his Carnegie Hall debut on September 28, 1972 with his band The Spiders from Mars, as part of their first US tour: http://bit.ly/1Rx7l6Z

Posted by Carnegie Hall on Monday, January 11, 2016

The Carnegie Hall show, whose planning started several months ago, was originally supposed to be a tribute to the Ashes to Ashes singer with performances by The Roots, Cyndi Lauper and The Mountain Goats, among others. The organisers have now decided to go forward with it as a memorial concert that will be titled The Music of David Bowie.

The organiser's official website stated, "This year's concert will certainly be remembered as a poignant celebration of his music by his friends, peers and fans. We are all deeply saddened by this news. The timing of our public on-sale date is bizarre...and the show is taking on many more emotions."

Tickets for the concert went on sale on Sunday, 10 January and were sold out immediately. The show's presenter Michael Dorf told Pollstar, "From a promoter's standpoint, the show sold out in two hours – all 2,800 tickets – and that is an unprecedented thing for anything I've ever experienced. But it's all kind of a very bittersweet success in the sense that it's now a tribute to someone who's passed versus a tribute to someone who was probably going to be in attendance."

Following calls and messages from fans asking about tickets, Dorf said, "But our hearts are going out – part of the process of saying goodbye to a legend like this is to listen to their music. So if there's a way to add another day or something, we're exploring right now what else we can do. The whole thing is kind of unprecedented territory."

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