John Paul Jones still plans to stage his opera, The Ghost Sonata, after three venues abandoned plans to host the performance.

In a new interview with The Times, Jones said he remains optimistic about the project and said it could be performed in Helsinki, Finland.

“The problem for me now is getting it performed,” Jones told The Times. “We had three opera houses lined up, then one dropped out so they all did. But I’ve done some demo tracks of it with Allan Clayton, who wants to sing the lead, and I think we might get a concert performance at the Helsinki Festival.”

The Helsinki Festival will take place in August and September, although no performance of The Ghost Sonata has been announced so far. The full festival schedule will be published in the spring.

The demo tracks Jones refers to are likely the same recordings released on a sampler CD that a collector had attempted to sell for $30,000.

Elsewhere in the interview, Jones confirmed the feminist themes of his new song cycle “Her Kind” which will be premiered in London on January 8. LedZepNews first revealed the theme of the song cycle in September.

“I didn’t really set out to be a feminist when choosing the texts,” he said. “I mean, who am I to take that position? But I read an awful lot of poetry, fascinating stuff from all over the world. And I found four texts that really spoke to me. They are by women, about women.”

Jones was also asked in the interview about the possibility of a Led Zeppelin hologram show, similar to ABBA Voyage. 

“I can’t imagine how that would work with Zeppelin,” he said. “I mean, with Abba you’ve got the costumes, the dance moves. We just got on stage and made music.”

Jimmy Page previously said that Led Zeppelin had been approached about a hologram show but claimed the surviving band members couldn’t agree on whether to proceed with it.

Speaking on stage at the Hay Festival in Wales in June 2022, Page said that the lack of band agreement meant that a Led Zeppelin hologram “didn’t really get moving.”

The interview with The Times is the first new interview with Jones since he spoke to piano manufacturer Steinway for a podcast interview in 2024.

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