Having spent their long and distinguished career of collaboration exploring Christmas and timeless religious music, Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band’s new tour Chapel and Tavern, sees them celebrate the lives and culture of ordinary folk. The first half of the concert takes place in the chapel, featuring the vigorous and enthusiastic music of the church gallery bands in an era when hymn writers happily took their inspiration from theatre music and popular song. After the interval, we’re in the tavern for rousing performances of catches, ballads, theatre songs and dance tunes. Both take the audience back to the chaotic London of Hogarth’s Gin Lane and the riotous world of Swift, Smollett and Thackeray, the enthusiastic singing of early Methodists and the village bands fondly remembered by Thomas Hardy. Cherish your soul before you let the old Adam and Eve run riot….
“I love working with the chaps,” Maddy muses, “it’s just so different and they’re so off the wall. Coming from a folk background I can relate to a lot of their dances and early music, but anything less like serious academic concerts when we tour you can’t imagine. When we go out at Christmas, it’s all streamers, balloons and lunacy.”
“When the same musicians – and their listeners – are to be found carousing in the pub on Saturday night and hymning innocently in church on Sunday morning, and the same tunes cross back and forth from the alehouse bench to the church pew, something fascinating is happening to the music and the way in which it is received. Chapel and Tavern is both musical laboratory and playground, in which Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band explore the nature of popular music-making from the death of Shakespeare to the accession of Queen Victoria.” – Andy Watts, 2021
Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band Tour
Fri 14 Borough Theatre, Abergavenny
Sat 15 Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan
Mon 17 Bridport Arts Centre, Dorset
Tue 18 SJE Arts, Oxford
Wed 19 The Stables, Milton Keynes
Thu 20 Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham
Sat 22 Revelation, Ashford
Sun 23 Stratford Playhouse, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Mon 24 St George’s, Bristol
Wed 26 Huntingdon Hall, Worcester
Thu 27 Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton
Sat 29 Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich
Sun 30 Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester