Saturday 04 Feb 2012   7.30pm

The Carnival Band Around The World in 80 Tunes!

Tickets: Tickets: £11 (£8.50 concessions) Family ticket: £35

If you’ve never heard the Carnival Band before, throw your preconceptions to the winds and prepare to enjoy!

A huge world map, a scoreboard, an expectant audience, over 25 instruments and 5 intrepid musical explorers. The stage is set for the Ultimate Challenge in World Music! In this whirlwind of a show, Romanian dances, haunting Andean melodies, virtuoso Chinese instrumental music and songs from Sudan are thrown into the mix. The tension builds right to the very last note – will our heroic band of sonic travellers complete the total?

The Carnival Band are the essence and the spirit of Carnival – celebration, festivity and exuberance. Their high energy performances combine early and traditional music from around the world, appealing to all ages.

Falling between ‘early music’ ‘world music’ ‘folk music’ and ‘classical’, they don’t fit easily into a pigeonhole. Most of the music is popular, much of it anonymous and traditional, but composers such as Pelham Humfrey and Thomas Arne elbow their way in. The band like to confuse styles, blur edges, mix categories. Macedonian Reggae, Balkan Bransles, Noel Coward meets James Brown, John Dowland shakes hands with Hank Wangford. It’s all part of the carnival ethos.

The Carnival Band know they are not ‘authentic’ and they love it! They love and respect the traditions on which they draw and they just want to have fun with the music and share their enjoyment with an audience.

So what do they play? The repertoire covers periods from the middle ages to the middle of the twentieth century and occasionally beyond. The music comes from England, France, Spain, Sweden, Croatia, Louisiana, Tanzania, Macedonia, Bolivia – in theory nowhere is excluded! The instrumentation is idiosyncratic, several of the band being multi-instrumentalists, and includes period instruments such as shawms and renaissance bagpipes, modern folk instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, and instruments from non-european traditions such as the ‘ud and the djembe. The band also burst into song from time to time with great enthusiasm if not with ‘bel canto’ beauty. But who said music has to be beautiful?

Sometimes referred to as Henry VIII’s Rock ‘n Roll Band (they play shawms and bagpipes with guitar bass and drums), the Carnival Band have been delighting audiences with their unique blend of musicianship and humour for over 20 years.

Don’t miss their first visit to the Drill Hall!