We’re delighted to hear that the Vapourer has been nominated in the category Best Original Track in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, along with the Rheingans Sisters, Marry Waterson & David A. Jaycock and Rufus & Martha Wainwright. The award ceremony takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on April 27th. Tickets: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3Cr8ZFPYwyP1kFF0fFQp8gx/venue-and-tickets

We’re excited to announce that we’ll be touring Australia and New Zealand this coming March.  See Live Dates for details. Pictured above: WOMAD New Zealand

2015 has been our best year yet for gigs, not only with some great UK dates such as WOMAD and Sidmouth but also a string of international outings, some highlights of which were:

Tonder, Denmark

Sunfest, Ontario

Caixa Forum, Madrid

Prague

Chateau Hardelot, France

WOMAD, Fuerteventura

Dranouter, Belgium
Thanks so much to our team and to all the promoters who made it such a great year.

The new Spiro album Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow will be released on Real World Records on Monday 13 April.

Recorded at Real World Studios, Jane Harbour (violin/viola), Jon Hunt (acoustic guitar/cello), Alex Vann (mandolin) and Jason Sparkes (piano accordion/piano) continue to break through the boundaries of their instruments to deliver a collection of fourteen exhilarating instrumental tracks, all imbued with a powerful emotional intensity.

Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow is an album about being alive and the extremes of human experience. The title is taken from a Keats’ poem of the same name with a line from the poem “Dancing music, music sad, both together, sane and mad” being pretty much a musical mission statement for the band.

“Music taps into something fundamental to us all” says Jane, “and instrumental music is particularly rewarding and meaningful as you don’t know why you’re feeling emotional. You’ve reached a place beyond words, the most amazing place that we all share. We go through life trying to connect with other people and the universe, and music is a powerful, fundamentally honest way of doing this. With instrumental music this connection is not muddled by words.”

It’s why Spiro are an instrumental band. Yet words are important – not only do the titles of each track inform the way the band perform it, they suggest a way into Spiro’s sound world whilst offering intensely personal listening experiences.

Listen to I Am the Blaze on Every Hill

“Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow” is available via:
Real World / iTunes /Amazon

We’re very honoured to be taking part in the centenary celebration of Bob Copper’s life and work at Cecil Sharp House in London on 24th January. The event is already sold out, but those lucky enough to have secured tickets will see a fabulous array of performers from the world of English folk music. We will be performing a specially composed instrumental suite based on tunes from the Copper Family repertoire.