BRIDGTON — Music for a Medieval Christmas, presented by the Calderwood Consort, will take place at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 42 Sweden Road. Admission is $10 at the door.

Here is the unusual telling of the Christmas story taken from the Wyclif Bible of 1380, the first English translation from the Latin, narrated in Middle English and accompanied by music from the 11th through the 17th centuries: Gregorian chants, secular and sacred motets sung and played on replica period instruments.

The second half of the program steps outside the Wyclif biblical setting with a variety of traditional and folk songs and instrumental dances sung and played on plucked and bowed strings, recorders, crumhorns and percussion, ending with an audience sing-along of a favorite Christmas carol.

The Calderwood Consort has been performing early music throughout Maine since the mid-seventies. They’ve appeared at the University of Maine Farmington and Orono campuses, Unity, Bowdoin and Bates colleges and many churches in Portland and the mid-coast region. They’ve appeared in concert with the Boston Camerata and choral groups throughout Maine. Members of Calderwood have included musicians with music degrees from Oxford University, the Royal Academy of Music, London and Bates College, as well as early music groups in Cincinnati and St. Louis.

All of their concerts include program notes and text translations and are performed in costume on replica instruments.

FMI: call Edwin Douglas at 207-797-0212 or Linda Johnson at 207-933-4922.


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