Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band announce a new Spring Tour in April 2023, as they bring their latest album release Chapel & Tavern to the masses.

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 songs. 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…

“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

The Chapel & Tavern album is Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band’s latest release, and is available from parkrecords.com or all good music retailers.

APRIL 2023 TOUR DATES