The York Early Music Christmas Festival will take place in the city from the 5th — 14th December.

A regular date on the city's cultural calendar, it will feature festive music spanning the centuries, plus some contemporary tunes.

Most concerts take place in the atmospheric medieval surroundings of St Margaret's Church where audience listen whilst also enjoying mulled wine and mince pies.

Highlights

This year's highlights include:

Apollo's Cabinet: Apollo's Jukebox Menu — Christmas edition, where the audience calls the shots in a musical menu of Baroque delights.

There is also the return of the Chiaroscuro Quartet and Consone Quartet for programmes of Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn whilst the Marian Consort and the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble present music from Bach to Palestrina.

Helen Charlston and Sholto Kynoch provide their own 'Lyrical Interlude', featuring works by Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe, whilst the Lowe Ensemble present 'Echoes of the Spanish Baroque' — including Handel's rare Spanish cantata.

There are also performances from the Fieri Consort Singers and Camerata Oresund.

We hope you will enjoy this year's wonderful line up of artists performing an array music through the agesorganisers

Wealth of music

Speaking about the attractions, NCEM's Dr Delma Tomlin MBE told 4BR: "Once again, we look forward to welcome friends old and new to our Christmas festival.

The York Early Music Christmas Festival was created in 1997 to introduce audiences to the extraordinary wealth of music associated with Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, from the Medieval to the Baroque, intertwined with the sagas, stories and tales of the North.

We hope you will enjoy this year's wonderful line up of artists performing an array music through the ages."