Step back in time with this musical welcome to Christmas

These spirited and captivating performers of early English music will be taking to the stage on Thursday 30 November at 7.30pm, bringing new life to once familiar songs and carols.

The York Waits take their name from the ancient city band of York, which was in continuous existence for at least 500 years until it was abolished in 1836.

Today’s York Waits have revived the band as it was in its sixteenth century heyday, playing a wide repertoire of period European music as well as their own arrangements of popular dance and ballad tunes.

Like their predecessors they play upon a noyse of shawms – ancestors of the oboe-bassoon family and characteristic instruments of waits before 1600. They also play cornett, saggbut and curtal, flutes, recorders great and small, crumhorns, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, lute and cittern.

The York Waits

By creating a replica band of waits, not only in their instruments and costumes, but also in their performing style, The York Waits aim to remove the music from the rarefied atmosphere of the concert hall and return it to the wider audience for whom it was created.

They give regular concerts throughout Britain, have appeared on television and radio and have enlivened many national celebrations, including festivities commemorating Richard III at Bosworth Field and Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace.  

Brian Moore, Chairman of Hartlepool Music Society – which has organised the concert - said: “The York Waits concert will be a tremendous start to Christmas which the whole family can enjoy.

“It’s bound to be a very entertaining evening with fine musicianship from traditional instruments playing some familiar and less-familiar Christmas music.”

Tickets cost £13, or £6.50 for students and the unwaged. For under 14s and carers, admission is free. For more details or to book visit www.destinationhartlepool.com or call (01429) 890000.