(gentle upbeat music) - The Utopia Early Music's Celtic Christmas concert has become an annual tradition, and it's back again this year at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark's.

And here to tell us more about the performance, Christopher Lecluyse.

Hi, Christopher.

- Hi there.

- Welcome back.

- Thank you, thank you.

- I told you this, I was just wondering when your concert would be?

- Right - In your first- - In few weeks.

- Yes, so let's talk about this concert that's become so popular, you've had to add a night.

- That's right, yeah, so Celtic Christmas, Utopia has offered this Christmas on four prior occasions.

This is our fifth Celtic Christmas.

And it's really becoming kind of like an annual tradition.

People love it so much that we've decided to basically do it every December.

- Okay, and I know you've got a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night this year.

- That's right, yeah.

- Leading up to Christmas.

- Yeah, we do that because it's so popular that we wanted to kind of spread the audience out, and that's why we encourage people to come early.

- Wonderful, okay, so let's talk about what's on the program.

- Sure.

Yeah, so Celtic Christmas captures music from all over the Celtic world.

Certainly Great Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, but also farther afield, we're doing a Breton piece from Brittany, which is a Celtic culture, and also some fiddle music from Cape Breton in Nova Scotia in Canada.

So everywhere Celtic folks have found themselves.

And because we're an early music ensemble, we perform about six centuries worth of music.

So some of the oldest pieces on our program will be from the Middle Ages.

- Wow, wow.

And I know you've got, you said meditative chants and lullabies.

- Yeah.

Yeah, what I love about combining early music and folk music is they really share a soundscape.

They work really well together.

So yes, definitely, we're doing, you know, medieval chants, we're doing Welsh plygain carols, which are songs that people in Wales sing at three in the morning on Christmas Eve until sunrise, some of which are very chant like.

And then we're also doing 19th, even, say, 20th century, 21st century arrangements of folk songs.

- Ah, wonderful, well, I'm very much looking forward to it, as I told you, so thank you so much for being here.

- Absolutely, thank you.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming concert, Utopia Early Music does Celtic Christmas.

It's this year, December 20th, 21st, and 22nd at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark.

Go to utopiaearlymusic.org, utopiaearlymusic.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact."

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