Christmas with the Colchester Waits

Medieval and Renaissance Christmas and seasonal hits on shawms, sackbuts, recorders, bagpipes and more...

The Colchester Waits are your local amateur shawm band, recreating the town band of the 13th-17th centuries with colourful costumes, a huge range of historical instruments, and a sense of fun.

"I saw the audience faces change from surprise to delight soon after you started!"
Val Haines, Hadleigh Folk and Acoustic Music Nights

Like most European towns of any size, Colchester had a band of Waits (civic musicians) throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque. They would have been employed by the town to perform at civic ceremonies and processions and to entertain the populace. The modern Colchester Waits play reproductions of the instruments of our forebears – shawms, trumpets, sackbutts, cornetts, lysards, bagpipes, recorders, gemshorns, fiddles and more, performing vibrant historical music with a sense of history, enthusiasm and fun, wearing the livery of a 16th-century band. Musical tastes range from the early Middle Ages to the present day, providing a fitting tune for any occasion.