Posted on

Chapter House Choir’s Carols By Candlelight goes online on December 16

Going virtual: Chapter House Choir members assembled via home recordings for the 2020 Carols By Candlelight concert. Picture: Kat Young

THE Chapter House Choir will release an online version of its ever-popular Carols By Candlelight concert as part of York Minster’s Christmas programme.

After the Coronavirus pandemic snuffed out the usual Carols By Candlelight format, the chamber choir’s 30-minute video performance will be go live next Wednesday (16/12/2020) at 7.30pm, free to view via yorkminster.org./whats-on and on the choir’s social-media channels.

Created by choir members performing individually from home, the virtual recordings will be set against footage of York Minster’s 13th-century Chapter House in candlelight. Christmas carols both old and new will be complemented by festive music performed by the Handbell Ringers of the Chapter House Choir.

Highlights of Carols By Candlelight concerts from past years will feature too, taken from performances in 2012 under Stephen Williams and 1999 under Jane Sturmheit.

The choir’s musical director, Ben Morris, says: “Each year, people say to me that Christmas starts for them with Carols By Candlelight in York Minster’s atmospheric Chapter House. At the end of this year, which has seen so much hardship, when choirs have been silenced and singing has been so missed, we felt it was more important than ever to create a version of this special tradition, so that people far and wide could join us virtually and share in a few minutes of festive music in the run-up to Christmas.”

New footage of the York Minster Chapter House by David Rose will feature in the virtual Carols By Candlelight concert. Picture: David Rose

The film has been edited by audio and visual engineer Kat Young, at present a research associate at the University of York’s AudioLab, and includes new footage of the Chapter House by videographer and sound specialist David Rose. 

Formed in 1965 to raise funds for the York Minster Appeal, the Chapter House Choir is a progressive and dynamic ensemble that presents beautiful yet challenging programmes from the full range of the choral repertoire.

The chamber choir regularly commissions new music, such as Everyone Sang by Roderick Williams, premiered with The King’s Singers; Song Cycle: Vive la Vélorution by Alexander L’Estrange, for the Tour de France Grand Depart in Yorkshire, and Arcadia by Judith Bingham, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War.

New pieces by Gabriel Jackson, Bob Chilcott, Paul Mottram, Lillie Harris and the choir’s founder conductor, Andrew Carter, have been premiered too.

Coming next? Wait and see. The choir’s latest Coronavirus update, posted on its website on November 22, says: “We currently have no live concerts planned, but we look forward to returning to live performances as soon as we can.”

Posted on

REVIEW: York Early Music Christmas Festival, Illyria Consort, NCEM, York

Illyria Consort: Concert programme began and ended in Italy, travelling north to Germany in between

REVIEW: York Early Music Christmas Festival, Illyria Consort, How Brightly Shines The Morning Star, National Centre for Early Music, York, December 7

ONE of the most pleasing of the Christmas Lutheran chorales is How Brightly Shines The Morning Star. It is still in most of our hymn books.

It was actually composed by Philipp Nicolai in 1674 during an outbreak of the plague, which gives it a certain contemporary resonance. So, its inclusion in two sets of variations as the centrepiece of this Baroque recital could hardly have been more appropriate.

Illyria Consort is a trio led by violinist Bojan Čičić, who is underpinned by David Miller’s theorbo and Stephen Devine at the organ (whose advertised use of the harpsichord sadly did not materialise). They began and ended in Italy, travelling north to Germany in between.

Frescobaldi had a knack for crystallising Italian traditions and latched onto the playing of bagpipes by shepherds in the Christmas season, with a capriccio on La Pastorale (known more widely later on as Pastorella), a tradition that endures to this day in the south.

It opened peacefully here, with organ and theorbo alone, before the violin introduced some frolicking. In Germany it was picked up by Biber, a violin virtuoso himself, in his Pastorella, where frolics soon turn to fireworks. It was a delight to hear them side by side and played with such relish.

Quite a different side to Biber emerged in his Third Mystery Sonata, The Nativity, which clings doggedly to the key of B minor in its three movements, doubtless presaging the trials the Christ child was eventually to face. There was plenty of theatre here, but not much comfort.

That came with the Morning Star variations. Buxtehude’s set for solo organ gained in rhythmic coherence as it progressed, culminating in a lively jig. But the real drama came in Nicolaus Strungk’s variations for the whole trio, which was a revelation, beginning as a slow passacaglia and developing into an imaginative fantasia at a variety of tempos. The Illyrians clearly loved it.

Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli’s Sonata VIII allowed a touch of Britain into the programme. Although born in Rome, he spent over half a century in London and died there in 1773, having become a Brit as John Stephen Carbonell in 1735.

Certainly, the sonata was on a par with Handel’s best in the genre, with two central Allegros, one free flowing, the other in a zesty staccato, before an evocative closing pastorale. It came as no surprise to discover that the Illyria chose six of his sonatas for their debut recording.

Tartini is right up there as a composer for the violin, his own instrument. His Pastorale sonata also has Christmas connotations, while exploiting a number of different bowing techniques that must have sounded avant-garde in his day. Čičić by now was in full flow and obviously enjoyed its challenges.

After a majestic Adagio and a frankly showy Allegro, it wound down into another gentle pastorale. This was definitely the child in the manger rather than the angels on high. A dream ending.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Posted on

The road may be longer than planned, but The Hollies’ bus will stop at York Barbican

All roads lead The Hollies to York Barbican…eventually

THE road will be even longer for The Hollies, who should have been playing York Barbican on April 26 in this Covid-crocked year but must now wait until September 23 2021.

The Manchester veterans will be playing 18 dates on their rearranged The Road Is Long tour from September 19 to October 19, including a second Yorkshire show at Sheffield City Hall.

Two original members from the 1960s’ British Invasion days, drummer Bobby Elliott and singer, songwriter and lead guitarist Tony Hicks, will be joined by lead singer Peter Howarth, bass player Ray Stiles, keyboardist Ian Parker and rhythm guitarist Steve Lauri.

Formed in 1962, The Hollies topped the charts on both sides of the Big Pond, notching up such hits as He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, I’m Alive, Stop, Stop, Stop, Here I Go Again, Bus Stop,On A Carousel, Just One Look, Carrie-Anne, Jennifer Eccles, I Can’t Let Go, Sorry Suzanne, Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress and The Air That I Breathe. 

In 1995, The Hollies were bestowed the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution To British Music, followed in 2010 by their induction into the American Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for their “impact on the evolution, development and perpetuation of rock & roll”.

Tickets for The Hollies’ York gig will go on sale on Friday (11/12/2020) at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Posted on

Livvy returns home to cast her spell over York Stage’s Jack And The Beanstalk panto

Livvy Evans: Returning to her home city to wave her wand as Fairy Mary in York Stage’s Jack And The Beanstalk. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

MARCH 17, London. York-born musical actress Livvy Evans is one day away from the opening of her West End role in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical at the Aldwych Theatre.

“After two weeks of tech rehearsals, we were getting ready to open, but instead we got called in to say the theatre would be closing immediately,” she recalls, now sitting in a different theatre, back in the home city she left 13 years ago, as she prepares to play Fairy Mary in York Stage’s socially distanced, Covid-secure Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @ 41 Monkgate, York.

Livvy went from Simply The Best to simply the worst of times, as the Coronavirus pandemic left the West End deserted for month after month. “Initially, we expected to go back after a few weeks, but at the last meeting we had with the company managers they told us ticket sales were being taken off for January and February and now, as with most shows, they’re aiming for a spring reopening,” she says. In other words, at least a year of gathering cobwebs will have passed.

In her professional career, Livvy has been “lucky enough to pretty much go from theatre job to theatre job” in such shows as Soho Cinders, Motown at the Shaftesbury Theatre and UK tours of Sister Act and Ghost: The Musical. “When I have had a time where I haven’t worked, I’ve done nannying support in special needs, and I get a lot from it; it’s much more fulfilling than working in restaurants,” she says.

“But right now there just aren’t the jobs available for actors that they might otherwise tend to do in the quiet times, such as teaching or working in bars,” she adds, on top of the blow of no furlough pay. “And we’re being asked to go back for less pay and fewer shows when we do re-start.”

Glory be that Nik Briggs came a’calling, offering Livvy the chance to join his Jack And The Beanstalk company for the panto season. “It must have been the beginning of September, and at that point it still hadn’t been confirmed that Tina wouldn’t be opening this year,” Livvy recalls.

“So, I could only say ‘hopefully’, and I’d need to get permission from the Tina company, so it all took a long time. But once we knew Tina wouldn’t be opening, I said to Nik, ‘I’d love to do it’. I’ve been a professional for many years, but since leaving for London, I’ve never done a professional show in York. Leeds, yes, Bradford, yes, but not York.”

Brought up in Huntington, Livvy moved south to train in musical theatre on a full scholarship at Arts Educational, in Chiswick, London, in 2008. “I normally only spend four or five days in York, but this year it’ll be six weeks, which will be lovely,” she says.

“I don’t think I’ve ever played Fairy before, and the only panto princess I’ve done was Jasmine in Aladdin at the Grand Opera House in 2006 with Syd Little and Michael Starke, who I then did Sister Act with. I remember he used to call me his ‘little Peking duck, his little dumpling’ in the panto!”

Livvy will be performing with York Stage for the first time. “Strangely, I never did a York Stage Musicals show when I was young, but I did a lot of the summer school youth projects with Simon Barry at the Grand Opera House, doing my first professional job in Aladdin on the back of playing Audrey in Little Shop Of Horrors,” she recalls.

“I liked being put in with the older group for York Musical Theatre Company shows, working with Paul Laidlaw and Jim Welsman – and I loved playing little Kate Mullins in the British premiere of Titanic: The Musical for that company.”

As opening night of Jack And The Beanstalk approaches fast on Friday, Livvy says:  “It’s great to be in York, especially at this time of year, back in the house I grew up in, and I’ve never been so excited to be playing the Fairy, spreading joy to everyone, although she’s a no-nonsense fairy! As everyone keeps saying, I’m going to be the talk of my niece’s playground!”

York Stage presents Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, from December 11 to January 3; show times, Monday to Saturday, 2pm and 7pm; Sundays, 1pm and 6pm; Christmas Eve, 12 noon and 5pm; New Year’s Eve, 12 noon. Box office: online only at yorkstagepanto.com. Please note, audiences will be seated in household/support bubble groupings only. 

Posted on

REVIEW: Palisander, Mischief & Merriment, York Early Music Christmas Festival

Palisander: First concerts for nine months in this Covid-blighted year

REVIEW: York Early Music Christmas Festival: Palisander, Mischief & Merriment, National Centre for Early Music, York, December 4, evening

THE latest lockdown ended just in time to allow York Early Music to open its Christmas festival before a real audience.

There were only about 30 of us, to be sure, seated at small tables in ones or twos, but what a difference over livestreaming. Best of all, it inspires the players. Palisander confessed that these two performances – there had been one in the afternoon – were their first for nine months. You would not have guessed.

The period of Advent, or preparation for Christmas, has lost much of its original intent. It was once a time of strict fasting – not a bad idea in these days of sedentary constraint – to be followed by a 12-day yuletide blowout of Mischief and Merriment, the title of this concert.

Palisander’s quartet of recorders ranged all over the Tudor and Stuart periods, with occasional sorties into traditional and modern repertory, an invigorating mix.

Recorders cover a vast rainbow of colours, from the pipsqueak garklein, barely six inches long with only three finger-holes, to the avuncular contrabass, which stands over six feet tall. The whole panoply was on display here.

Players changed instruments on the move, so that as many as ten different ones were heard in a single piece. Toes began to tap at once in dances by Susato and Arbeau, which prepared the ground for a lively quintet of English numbers, three by Antony Holborne, marked by subtle use of staccato.

Several carols were woven into the tapestry, most with tasty but idiomatic harmonies arranged by one of the group, Miriam Monaghan. They included the spring song from Piae Cantiones (1582), nowadays better known through Good King Wenceslas.

Most of the mischief and merriment in the Elizabethan court was organised by the Lord of Misrule. He would surely have selected Toby Young’s Recorder Revolution!, which was pleasingly anarchic and lots of fun. Similarly, a theatre suite, played in masks, reflected Stuart customs. All were given with enthusiasm and joie de vivre that were infectious.

I had not previously thought that an hour of nothing but recorders could be so entertaining. You live and learn.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Posted on

Getting mighty Crowded at Scarborough Open Air Theatre next summer after Kaiser Chiefs and Bryan Adams confirm dates

Kaiser Chiefs: Never missing a beat at Scarborough Open Air Theatre next July

I PREDICT a trio!

First came Crowded House’s confirmation for June 8, next, Kaiser Chiefs for July 11, and now, this new rising morning, Bryan Adams for July 1, as Scarborough Open Air Theatre announces another burst of big signings for Summer 2021.

New Zealander Neil Finn’s re-grouped Australian band Crowded House will open the British leg of their first European travels in more than a decade on the Yorkshire coast to showcase Dreamers Are Waiting, next year’s fruits of Lockdown labours: their seventh studio album but first since Intriguer in June 2010. The release date is yet to be confirmed.

Leeds lads Kaiser Chiefs promise a “no-holds-barred rock’n’roll celebration” on their much-requested return to Scarborough OAT after their May 27 2017 debut. “We cannot wait to get back to playing live shows again and it will be great to return to this stunning Yorkshire venue,” says frontman Ricky Wilson. “We had a cracking night there in 2017, so roll on July 11!”

Expect a Sunday night of such Yorkshire anthems as Oh My God, I Predict A Riot, Everyday I Love You Less And Less, Ruby, Never Miss A Beat and Hole In My Soul from the Chiefs, whose last album, 2019’s top-five entry Duck, marked their return to their original label, Polydor.

Crowded House: Always take the Scarborough weather with you next June

That summer, they played Leeds United’s stadium, Elland Road, and this summer they were booked in for another open-air headliner at Dalby Forest, near Pickering, until Covid-19 said “No”.

Scarborough OAT venue programmer Peter Taylor, of promoters Cuffe and Taylor, says: “Ever since their show here in 2017, fans have been asking for us to bring Kaiser Chiefs back to Scarborough OAT.

“We are delighted to oblige, and this is going to be another all-action rock’n’roll show that no fan will want to miss.”

Completing the new additions to Scarborough OAT’s ever-expanding 2021 diary, Canadian singer Bryan Adams will play there as part of his ten-date UK outdoor tour that will conclude at Harewood House, near Leeds, on July 10.

Adams, 61, will be making his second appearance at the Scarborough arena after his sold-out debut on August 8 2016. Once more, he will do Run To You, Cuts Like A Knife, Summer Of ’69, I Do It For You et al for you.  

Bryan Adams: Scarborough return next July after 2016 show

Programmer Taylor says: “Bryan Adams is one of the world’s best-selling artists and an international music legend. We are beyond thrilled he is returning to Scarborough Open Air Theatre next summer.

“Bryan joins an incredible line-up of headliners for 2021 and we cannot wait for the season to start!”

That list now runs to: June 8, Crowded House; June 12, Lionel Richie; June 13, The Beach Boys; June 19, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro; June 20, Ru Paul’s Drag Race: Werq The World; July 1, Bryan Adams; July 3, Snow Patrol; July 7, Duran Duran; July 9, Keane; July 10, Olly Murs; July 11, Kaiser Chiefs; July 25, Lewis Capaldi; August 17, Westlife, and August 20, Nile Rodgers & Chic.

Still more artists and dates are to be confirmed. Meanwhile, tickets for Crowded House, Kaiser Chiefs and Bryan Adams all will go on general sale at 9am on Friday, December 11 via ticketmaster.co.uk and scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Tickets for Adams’s Harewood House show will be available from the same time at ticketmaster.co.uk/bryan-adams-tickets/artist/734390 and aegp.uk/ba2021

Bryan Adams’s poster for his July 1 concert in Scarborough
Posted on

Crowded House hope to play to exactly that at Scarborough Open Air Theatre in 2021

Three Finns you should know: Dad Neil and sons Liam and Elroy plus the other two that make up a Crowded House line-up for 2021’s first album and European tour in a decade

DO dream it’s over! Let’s hope Crowded House can live up to their name when Neil Finn’s band play Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Britain’s biggest purpose-built outdoor concert arena, next summer as we pin hopes on the Covid vaccination in the months ahead.

Crowded House, largely the family Finn, will be undertaking their first European tour in more than ten years in 2021, heading to the Yorkshire coast on June 8 for their first UK show. Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff and London await.

Tickets will go on general sale via scarboroughopenairtheatre.com at 9am on Friday, December 11.

Formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1985 by New Zealander Neil Finn, they will line up next summer with Finn, fellow founder Nick Seymour, Mitchell Froom and Finn’s sons Liam and Elroy.

Familiar favourites such as Don’t Dream It’s Over, Weather With You, Four Seasons In One Day, Distant Sun and Fall At Your Feet will be bolstered by new material. On October 15, Crowded House released their first single in a decade, Whatever You Want, accompanied by a video directed by Nina Ljeti, starring Mac DeMarco.

Fresh from Finn touring as part of the latest line-up of Fleetwood Mac, he had begun recording a new studio album in Los Angeles in January but once the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed, Finn and co switched to exchanging new songs via online files.

More fruits of those lockdown labours, the album Dreamers Are Waiting, will be released early next year. 

Scarborough OAT venue programmer Peter Taylor, of promoters Cuffe and Taylor, says: “When we learned Crowded House were touring Europe, we just knew we had to try and bring them to Scarborough OAT. This is a real coup for the venue and the Yorkshire coast.

“Crowded House are regarded as one of the most influential bands of the past 40 years and their fans are utterly devoted. This will be an incredible show.”

To view Crowded House’s single Whatever You Want, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggTaHMoQYs&feature=youtu.be

Posted on

Milton Rooms in Malton relaunches donations appeal to boost funds

MIlton Rooms, Malton: Seeking donations via Go Fund Me

VACCINATIONS to fight coronavirus are around the corner, but the focus at the Milton Rooms in Malton is on another form of help: donations.

The Market Place community and entertainment venue has spent a large part of 2020 closed under lockdown restrictions, with only a limited reopening in September and October for several socially distanced events.

The Milton Rooms is a charitable trust run by a board of trustees and operated by volunteers, who have spent much of lockdown giving the venue a spruce-up and planning the programme of events for when restrictions are lifted.

Faced by little income coming in, help from the community is needed to meet the considerable costs of keeping the building running, not least insurance and utility bills.

Hence the Milton Rooms has relaunched its Go Fund Me appeal to help in that task until running a full programme of events for the benefit of the community can be resumed. Visit gofundme.com/f/the-milton-rooms-charity to donate.

Chairman Ray King says: “It costs a significant amount to maintain the Milton Rooms, and during the Covid-19 emergency we’ve been unable to run a full programme of events and those we have been able to run have been with a limited audience.

“So, we’re asking our local community to help support us. I do realise how difficult it is for everyone at the moment but all help would be welcomed.”

Venue manager Lisa Rich says: “We were delighted to re-open our doors in September, following nearly six months of closure and received amazing feedback from our audiences. 

“We welcomed back some familiar faces with Ryedale Blues Club and Craft & Chat and worked within our community to assist local groups in being able to restart their events safely within our venue.

“However, at the beginning of November, we had to sadly close our doors once more and now we have the new tier [Tier 2] system in place for probably some time. The Milton Rooms is a vital community hub and we are asking for support to help us to survive this most challenging of times. 

“We look forward to welcoming our audiences and users back in the very near future and are working on a diverse and dynamic programme of events for when we’re able to reopen fully.”

Three Covid-secure, socially distanced events will be going ahead in December. Both performances of Magical Quests North’s festive children’s show, Emerald The Elf And Father Christmas, on December 13 at 10.30am and 12 noon, have sold out.

Tickets are still available, however, for Taphouse Burnout’s 7.30pm acoustic concert on December 19 and Dickens – The Man Who Invented Christmas?’’, a fun look at the history of Christmas customs and how Charles Dickens influenced modern-day festivities on the afternoon of December 20.

For tickets, go to: themiltonrooms.com/events. For enquiries on hiring the Milton Rooms, email info@themiltonrooms.com.

Posted on

REVIEW: The Seven Deadly Sins, Opera North at Leeds Playhouse, livestream, November 21 to 23

Dancer Shelley Eva Haden’s Anna II and mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta’s Anna I in Gary Clarke’s Opera North production of The Seven Deadly Sins. Picture: Tristram Kenton

TWO weeks before this Gary Clarke production of Weill’s ballet chanté was due to go into rehearsal, the second Lockdown was announced, making the planned live performance – in a double bill with Acis And Galatea– an impossibility.

So, Acis was quickly dropped and a new physically distanced livestream became the order of the day. Without the normal lead-times, this was a tall order. Clarke rapidly conceived Anna (Anna I, the singer and Anna II, the dancer) and her family as German immigrants fleeing Hitler and thus displaced from the start.

George Johnson-Leigh’s set, imagined as an abandoned film studio, assigned a separate dais or “box” for each sin, with the family displaced into the no-man’s land between the boxes every time the two Annas changed city.

A large Hollywood sign at the back of the set thus pointed the contrast between that promised land, still booming in the 1930s, and the privations of the Depression – and, of course, current stringencies.

The contrast between the two Annas was not quite as strong as it might have been, partly because their roles were filled by two equally fetching performers. Canadian mezzo Wallis Giunta’s Anna I, supposedly the thinker and practical half of her personality, seemed to be enjoying, almost revelling, in the travelogue.

“Wallis Giunta is an actress of many hues and, when her tone is as focused as this, irresistible”. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Whereas a deeper pain was etched into the features of dancer Shelley Eva Haden’s Anna II, as she learnt to moderate her wilfulness to suit the paying customers on their tour.

But the paradox at the heart of this morality tale, about what you need to do to accumulate wealth, could not have been clearer: “Conquer your weaker self to conquer the world”, in Michael Feingold’s translation, sung under a shower of dollar bills. Only the temptations themselves might have been writ larger, although that would be hard to envisage in present conditions.

Giunta was on top form, forthright, even bossy, when need be but able to mine a deep nostalgia in the epilogue. She is an actress of many hues and, when her tone is as focused as this, irresistible.

Haden was no less versatile and utterly tireless. To Clarke’s choreography, she ranged the whole spectrum of dance, from the extravagance of Busby Berkeley (in a splendid, giant-sized feather headdress) in Anger, to Pavlova’s tutu-clad Dying Swan immediately afterwards in Gluttony.

She reached a manic peak parodying punk anarchist dancer Valeska Gert. Her brief spoken interjections were pleasingly clear.

Nicholas Butterfield as Brother and Dean Robinson as Mother in Opera North’s The Seven Deadly Sins. Picture: Tristram Kenton

The family quartet – tenors Nicholas Butterfield and Stuart Laing, baritone Dean Robinson and bass Campbell Russell – carried off their solo work as well as they blended, notably in the Sloth motet and the prayerful strictures of Lust. The ending was suitably ambivalent.

James Holmes, editor of the critical edition of Weill’s orchestral works and former Head of Music at this company, could not have been a better choice as conductor. The differentiation in styles was masterly and the playing, by 15 instruments in a reduced version by H K Gruber and Christian Muthspiel, had a succulent clarity.

It was just a pity that the low camera angles precluded much sight of the orchestra, although it was on stage. This is a minor reservation in the face of such an admirable achievement against near-impossible odds.

Finally, my special thanks to two patient members of the press office, Elizabeth Simmonds and Rowland Thomas, for bailing me out of a technological nightmare. Bring back live performance …                                                                                   

Review by Martin Dreyer

https://ondemand.operanorth.co.uk/productions/the-seven-deadly-sins-2020/.

Posted on

York Early Music Christmas Festival opens today…and it’s live at the NCEM

Welcome to the 2020 York Early Music Christmas Festival: Palisander reach for their recorders for today’s opening brace of concerts. Picture: Marc McGarraghy

CHRISTMAS arrives today at the National Centre for Early Music with the reopening of its doors for the annual York Early Music Christmas Festival.

Recorder quartet Palisander will launch the festivities at the Covid-secure St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, with two socially distanced concerts at 4.30pm and 7pm.

The festival of live concerts will run until December 12, complemented by the inaugural York Christmas At Home festival of streamed concerts from December 11 to 13. Full details, including tickets and concert times, can be found at ncem.co.uk.

Look out for Martin Dreyer’s reviews of Palisander’s Mischief & Merriment programme today and Illyria Consort’s How Brightly Shines The Morning Star on December 7 in CharlesHutchPress.