Press release: 20th Anniversary Celebrations for the Prescot Festival

A top-ranking brass band, a celebrated cathedral choir and a screening of a classic British film are among the highlights of a now 20-year old Merseyside arts festival this June.

South Liverpool Orchestra opens the 10-day Prescot Festival programme in style on Friday 21 June, with the world-renowned Liverpool Cathedral Choir performing the following day.

The week continues with events that include a screening on Tuesday 25 June of the now-legendary 1981 film Chariots of Fire, featuring a host of local locations, exactly 100 years after the real-life events that inspired the film. Award-winning Wingates Brass Band perform on Friday 28 June, in their 150th year.

To mark the second birthday of Prescot’s Shakespeare North Playhouse, the festival presents an afternoon of opera highlights on Monday 24 June in the venue’s own Sir Ken Dodd Performance Garden, and the one-woman one-act play No Coward Soul from Emily Parr in the Studio Theatre on Wednesday 26 June. Festival proceedings come to a close with an eagerly awaited return appearance from Maghull Wind Orchestra in a Last Night of the Proms-style finale on Sunday 30 June.

Liverpool Bach Collective, ceilidh band Two Left Feet, and Wirral-based musical theatre company BOST are all on this year’s lineup, along with musical showcases for the choral and instrumental talents of local primary school students.

‘As we reach two decades of the Prescot Festival, it remains an incredible joy and an honour to be able to offer this annual celebration of community music-making and local artistic talent,’ said artistic director Dr Robert Howard.

‘This year we look forward to two new festival events in collaboration with the pioneering Shakespeare North Playhouse, and a much-anticipated appearance from Liverpool Cathedral Choir, an ensemble that enjoys an international reputation.’

Festival-goers also have the opportunity to play a part themselves, by joining a Come-&-Sing choir for a performance of Faure’s Requiem on 22 June, competing in the 2024 Prescot Festival Short Story Competition, or by joining in the barn dance on 27 June.

The 20th Annual Prescot Festival of Music & the Arts runs from Friday 21 to Sunday 30 June. Tickets go on sale on 1 May from Poco Bar & Cafe at 30 Eccleston Street, L34 5QJ (cash only) or online at prescotfestival.co.uk. Please note that tickets for 24 & 26 June’s Shakespeare North Playhouse events are available exclusively from the theatre itself, in person or online at shakespearenorthplayhouse.co.uk.

Full programme details are also online at prescotfestival.co.uk.

Photo: BOST at the 2023 Prescot Festival (Alan Humphreys Photography)

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