Join The Waits - one of Europe’s longest-standing early music ensembles, for a festive celebration concert of Christmas music and carols.
Christmas music and traditions are many centuries old - they long predate Charles Dickens - and early music band The York Waits provide a soundtrack to the festive seasons of England and Europe from the 1400s to the early 1700s.
Songs include some of the very earliest Christmas carols, dating from the 15th century, and there is music that reflects the hardships and the jollities of the “Little Ice Age” that gripped England in the Tudor and Jacobean periods. Instruments played by the Waits - one of Europe’s longest-standing early music ensembles - include shawms and sackbuts, a “great consort” of bass recorders, plus curtals, harp, crumhorns, hurdy gurdy, bagpipes and the early forms of the violin and guitar.
The concert’s title Welcome Yule is taken from one of earliest English carols and the Waits are based in a city where rumbustious celebrations of the old Norse Yuletide carried on till the late 1500s, and have been revived today.
Dates
Sun 21 December 2025
Space
Cellar Theatre
Tickets
£15.00 - £20.00
Duration
90 minutes
