The York Waits

Leamington Music

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.

‘Behind the Music’ FREE pre-concert talk: 6.45pm

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