+ York Waits

‘The York Waits take their name from the ancient city band of York, the earliest evidence for which we find in 14th century records ... Today’s York Waits have revived the band as it was in its heyday in the 16th century, playing a wide repertoire of period European music as well as their own arrangements of popular dance and ballad tunes. Like their predecessors they play upon a noyse of shawms, ancestors of the oboe-bassoon family, and characteristic instruments of waits before 1600. They also play cornett, saggbut, and curtal, flutes, recorders great and small, crumhorns, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, lute and cittern. By creating a replica band of waits, not only in their instruments and costumes, but also in their performing style, The York Waits have attempted to remove the music from the rarefied atmosphere of the concert hall and return it to the wider audience for whom it was created.’