Former Beatle Paul McCartney performed a surprise mini-concert in New York’s Times Square to the delight of throngs of workers, tourists and fans.

McCartney, 71, and his band sang tracks from his upcoming album, New, which is due to be released in the US on October 15.

“Wow! Really excited to be playing New York Times Square at 1pm this afternoon!” McCartney tweeted about an hour before the packed mini-concert.

Concert was kept a secret until shortly before its start

“Come on down to Times Square. It’s all going to be happening there!” he added.

Security guards at the site said the 15-minute, lunch-time concert was kept a secret until shortly before its start.

“I loved it. It is hard not to like this band. They have been playing together for so long; they just make perfect music every time they hit a stage,” Said Hamdan, 51, a teacher in New York who learned about the concert through Twitter, said. Tawanna Flowers, a 25-year-old security guard working at the event, described the mini-concert as “awesome”.

New, which features 12 tracks including New and Queenie Eye is McCartney’s first album of new material in six years.

“A lot of the tracks are quite varied and not necessarily in a style you’d recognise as mine,” the vocalist and bassist said on his website.

“But I didn’t want it to all sound the same. We had a lot of fun.”

On Wednesday, he did a special show and master class for 400 teenagers at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in the New York borough of Queens. The school was founded by singer Tony Bennett, who attended the performance.

McCartney and drummer Ringo Starr are the only surviving members of The Beatles that also included guitarists John Lennon and George Harrison.