Il Divo celebrate 20 years as they honour band mate Carlos' legacy

The quartet started their birthday celebrations earlier this year with the release of their tenth full length album XX, the group's first album with new member Steven LaBrie, after the tragic death of founding member Carlos Marin in 2021 from Covid.

Following his passing Urs Bühler (tenor) of Switzerland, Sébastien Izambard (tenor) of France and David Miller (tenor) of America, were joined by new member, American baritone Steven LaBrie, building on a remarkable career which has seem them sell 30 million albums worldwide, score 50 number-one hits and earn 160 gold and platinum records across 35 countries.

Sébastien said: “It's amazing. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realise that 20 years have gone by but I don't try to hold on to those 20 years. I always try to live in the present and celebrate that. I'm not one of those people that looks back at the past and says ‘Wow! That's amazing!’ I've never seen it that way but it is good to celebrate.

“Really I think the glue over the years has been the fans. It's been the fans that have kept us going. They have come and supported us and they have bought our tickets, and that means the world to us. And it's also the passion for the music and the fact that we are totally different individuals. And we've also been through so much. We lost one member after 18 years to Covid, and when we lost Carlos we thought that we were done. We were not going to go back. It was always the four of us but the fans were really the engine behind us getting back, the people who were demanding that we kept going. And also we wanted to keep the legacy for Carlos. We just thought that if it had happened to one of us, we would have all wanted the others to continue.

“But I did think that we would never find anybody else. But David had sung with Steven years before and he said ‘I know somebody.’ We all thought of many, many other people but we were all still stuck on Carlos. But Steven sent us some recordings of his voice and it was just incredible. Of course it is different to Carlos but there are also some similarities in the voice. Otherwise of course it's a voice that is very personal to Steven. But it's the fact that he was the first that we heard and he was amazing, and I think just sometimes the universe throws you things.

“And of course it feels different. We lost somebody who was our brother but Steven is an amazing person who's just as much talented as Carlos or any of us and so we carried on.”

And the enjoyment is undimmed: “Over the years it has made us closer working together, and we decided to open our own label and we've produced our own recordings. I did a lot of arrangements for the songs and I wrote a new song with David. It has shifted the power back into the band.

“Carlos used to say that it was like a good wine. The older you get, the more you relax and the more you can just start to enjoy. When we started it was all boom, boom, boom, going to one place, going to another place but now it's more about giving back. When I started, I wanted to be loved, but now I want to give people real enjoyment and pleasure.”