The Choir of Royal Holloway
Rupert Gough director
The King, the Archbishop, a Spy, and the English Exiles
A programme of early music built around the trials and tribulations of English composers surviving the religious upheavals of 16th and 17th century England. This programme compares the dangerous dual life of William Byrd with three composers who were forced into exile. Exploring the music of Byrd, Bull, Dering, and Philips provides an opportunity for the telling of many stories about accusations of spying, plotting against the king, and travels around 17th century Europe.
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 6.45pm
Interval: 20 mins
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student
Apollo’s Cabinet
Apollo’s Jukebox
In 1672, violinist John Banister kicked off a real revolution by inviting paying guests into his own home, offering a simple but radical deal: you choose the music, we play it. For a shilling, the audience picked the programme. This was the birth of a new, democratic way of experiencing music – direct, personal, and connected. The idea caught on fast, shifting music from palace halls to pubs and city streets. This programme picks up that spirit today: with a musical menu in one hand and a shilling in the other, expect rowdy street songs, lively dances, moving arias, and gossip fresh from Georgian London’s tabloids. It’s about good music, great stories, and the audience calls the shots
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 6.45pm
Interval: 20 mins
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student
Joglaresa
Elsa Bradley percussion, dulcimer, & chorus, Essa Flett fidel & chorus
Jeremy Avis voice, Jonny Akerman percussion, dulcimer, fidel, & chorus
Louise Anna Duggan percussion, dulcimer, harp, & chorus
Victoria Couper voice & harp
Here we Come a-Carolling!
Joglaresa are back for Christmas and need YOU to come and sing along, raising the rafters with joyous medieval and traditional ‘caroles’! The audience are full-throatedly in the driving seat, provided with a beautifully illustrated booklet of lyrics & musical dots which encourages one and all to join in and celebrate the season singing along with the choruses of these ever-hummable festive favourites. Come straight to the concert and simply sing along with the festive classics or join Joglaresa for a short workshop beforehand to learn the nuts and bolts of a few numbers you didn’t know you always knew – mulled wine (and mince pies) included to warm up the vocal cords beautifully.
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE workshop: 6.45pm
Interval: 20 mins
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student
The Mellstock Band
Dave Townsend concertina and voice, Caroline Butler violin and voice
Tim Hill clarinet and voice, Philip Humphries serpent and voice
The Christmas Hearth
The Mellstock Band invite you to their Christmas fireside with a seasonal mix of jovial songs, stirring dance music, and haunting carols, assisted by Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, John Clare, and William Barnes. We celebrate all things comfortable with hearty harmonies, soulful solos, and exuberant instrumentals, bringing to life the sound of a nineteenth-century village band with fiddle, clarinet, concertina, and serpent. The music is linked together by carefully selected readings which tell the story of Christmas celebrations in nineteenth-century England, and served with mulled wine and mince pies.
Concert generously supported by The Arts Society Royal Leamington Spa
The finer details…
Interval: 20mins
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Unreserved: £23 full price | £11.50 under-35s | £3 child/student
The York Waits
Deborah Catterall and Gareth Glyn Roberts singers, narration
Tim Bayley, William Marshall, Lizzie Gutteridge, Susan Marshall, Anna Marshall shawms, sackbuts, recorders, curtal, harp, violin, guitar, bagpipes, hurdy gurdy
Fortune My Foe
The early 1600s might have been a period of pestilence and plotting, but they were also a golden age of music and drama. Using the wind and stringed instruments of the age and drawing on historical sources, long-established early music group The York Waits (who are based in the home city of Guy Fawkes) provide a soundtrack and narrative to the origins and aftermath of the notorious Gunpowder Plot of 1605. There are songs and dance tunes of Elizabethan and Jacobean England – many of which became popular throughout Europe – and Macbeth’s witches make an appearance. Instruments include sackbuts, shawms, harp, recorders, curtal, the early forms of violin and guitar, plus bagpipes and hurdy gurdy.
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 6.45pm
Interval: 20 mins
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student
Stile Antico
The Golden Renaissance
In this attractive and highly contrasted programme, Stile Antico select one piece from each of their sixteen award-winning albums to create a thrilling journey through some of the greatest music of the Renaissance. Exuberant works by composers such as Byrd, Gibbons, Tomkins, and Praetorius rub shoulders with tranquil motets by Taverner, Clemens non Papa, and Tallis, and the alluring sounds of Huw Watkins’s virtuosic The Phoenix and the Turtle, written especially for the group. Allegri’s timeless Miserere completes this mouthwatering programme.
Concert generously supported by Diane Holt and John & Jean Morgan
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 6.45pm
Interval: 20 mins
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £29 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £19 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £14 full price | £3 child/student
Rune
Angela Hicks soprano, Daniel Thomson tenor, Jean Kelly harp
May Robertson vielle, Daniel Scott recorders & portative organ
Decameron Musicale
Giovanni Boccaccio wrote his masterwork Decameron after the outbreak of the Plague in Florence, 1348. It is a tale in which a group of friends, sequestered from the horrors of the plague in a rural villa, share stories with each other to entertain, rouse, and move. This programme is a mosaic of musical stories from early modern Europe featuring music by Landini, de Vitry, Dunstable, Binchois, and Machaut, and threaded with medieval music from more distant times and places, just as Boccaccio weaved together stories from as far away places as India and the Middle East.
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 7.45pm
Interval: None
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student
Monteverdi String Band
Oliver Webber and Theresa Caudle violins
Wendi Kelly and David Brooker violas, Mark Caudle bass violin
Hannah Ely soprano | Toby Carr lute & theorbo
The Madrigal Reimagined
The Monteverdi String Band return with a fascinating programme that explores the blossoming and transformation of the Italian madrigal as reflected in diverse settings from solo voice and lute to a full string band. We will discover every facet of the madrigal’s transformative journey from gentle part song to one of the dramatic cornerstones of opera.
Monteverdi’s powerfully poignant settings nestle with virtuosic ornamental reworkings of madrigals, instrumental preludes, and canzonas by Rore, Palestrina, Bovicelli, and Caccini to create miniature scenes, framed by short, topical readings from the worlds of music, dance and theatre.
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 6.45pm
Interval: 20 mins
Estimated finish: 9.30pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student
The Binchois Consort
Matthew Farrell and Tom Lilburn altos
Dominic Bland, Tom Castle, Mark Dobell and George Pooley tenors
Andrew Kirkman director | Jamie Savan slide trumpet
‘In the Midst of Death there is Life’:
Celebrating 550 years of the Afterlife of Guillaume Du Fay
The 550th anniversary of the death of Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume Du Fay (the dominant figure in European music of the second half of the 15th century) provides a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the composer’s virtuosic contribution to music. Jamie Savan’s addition of the slide trumpet to the line-up brings a local connection too, as some of the earliest evidence of the instrument relates to trumpeters in the service of the Earl of Warwick.
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 7.45pm
Interval: None
Estimated finish: 9.45pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student
The Gesualdo Six
Owain Park director, Guy James and Alasdair Austin countertenors
Joseph Wicks and Josh Cooter tenors, Michael Craddock baritone
Queen of Hearts
A selection of Motets and Chansons from the French Court, focusing on European Queens: Anne of Brittany, Margaret of Austria, Anne Boleyn, and Mary Tudor. Reflecting on these earthly regencies, devotional motets for the Queen of Heaven are interwoven with texts from the Song of Songs, appropriated to venerate the Blessed Virgin, alongside specially written chansons and motets commemorating key moments in the reign of Europe’s Queens. Music by Brumel, Compère, Festa, de Févin, Gombert, L’Héritier, Mouton, des Prez, Prioris, Ninfea Crutwell-Reade, & Owain Park.
Concert generously supported by John & Jean Morgan
The finer details…
‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 6.45pm
Interval: None
Estimated finish: 8.45pm
Tickets
Front Nave: £28 full price | £3 child/student
Middle Nave: £18 full price | £9 under-35s | £3 child/student
Sides: £13 full price | £3 child/student