The Mellstock Band are back by popular demand! They bring their programme, The Christmas Hearth, to the Unitarian Chapel in Warwick for the first time - many will remember their fantastic concerts in Warwick’s Lord Leycester Hospital in years past. 

Leamington Music and the Band invite the audience 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. Dressed in costume from Hardy’s time, The Mellstock Band will celebrate all things comfortable with hearty harmonies, soulful solos, and exuberant instrumentals, bringing to life the sound of a nineteenth-century village band with voices, 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.

Leamington Music have been bringing the Mellstock Band to Warwick for over twenty years now and is always a sell-out. This year’s date sold out so quickly that a second performance needed to be arranged; there are still a few tickets available for the second date but these won’t be around for long!

Another audience favourite - a Christmas programme from the wonderfully inventive Early Music band Joglaresa - is surefire entertainment. The programme they bring to St Mary’s Church this year is Here We Come A-Carolling!, an evening of song and spectacle that spans centuries, continents, and traditions, brought to life in vocal harmony accompanied by fidel, harp, recorders, and a range of percussion instruments including a hammered dulcimer.

For this concert, 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. 

Listeners can come straight to the concert and simply sing along with the festive classics or join Joglaresa for a free, short workshop before the concert at 6.45pm to learn the nuts and bolts of a few numbers you didn’t know you always knew - with mulled wine (and mince pies) included to warm up the vocal cords beautifully.

Members of Joglaresa will arrive in the morning to give a special concert to children in Castle Hill Baptist Church for local children as part of the Leamington Music Education & Community Programme, which will also be live-streamed to nearly 10,000 children in schools across Warwickshire. It will almost certainly be the first time these children will ever have experienced these rare and fascinating instruments.