The Oxford Waits

2010: with piper Sophie Matthews

SATURDAY 9 MARCH 2013 (7.30pm)

The Frolics of Oxford

St Mary's Church, Totnes (Totnes Early Music)

5-piece (Tim, Caroline, Ian, Edward & Giles Lewin)

Tickets £12 (£5 students and young people) tel. 01803 849414


www.totnesearlymusic.org.uk/

SUNDAY 16 JUNE 2013

Blue Plaque unveiling (site of Civil War Treaty for the Surrender of Oxford)

Mill Lane, Old Marston, Oxford (further details to be confirmed)

4-piece (Tim, Caroline, Ian & Edward)

SUNDAY 21 JULY 2013

English Heritage Festival of Living History

Kelmarsh Hall, Kelmarsh, Northants, NN6 9LY

4-piece (Tim, Caroline, Ian & Edward)

SATURDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 2013

Mediaeval banquet

Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire

Swyndelstock (private function)

SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER 2013

A 17th-century Christmas

Holywell Music Room, Holywell Street, Oxford OX1 3BN

Further details to be confirmed

'Terrific entertainment’ Brian Kay, BBC Radio 3

The Oxford Waits take their name from a real-life band of city musicians, known as 'waits,' who flourished in Oxford during the 17th century. Performers appear in period costume, and concerts are enlivened by street ballads, dance tunes, airs and rounds as well as readings from diarists and poets. Superb singing voices are matched by specialist skills in an array of period instruments.

A full band line-up consists of five performers, but the Oxford Waits are also represented by smaller combinations of musicians, as well as by individual artists in solo recitals. The Oxford Waits are available for public concerts - and for private events too, such as banquets, fairs, themed parties, school visits, weddings and Civil War re-enactments.

Bookings: 01865 249194

LINE-UP

The four-piece: key members since the band's debut are...

Tim Healey (narrator, vocals, shawm, recorder, pandora)

Caroline Butler (vocals, baroque violin)

Edward Fitzgibbon (vocals, lute, orpharion, tambourine)

Ian Giles (vocals, hurdy gurdy, percussion)

The five-piece includes a bagpiper, and over the years we have been privileged to play with Charles Spicer (a founder member), Jon Boden, Giles Lewin, Andy Letcher and Sophie Matthews

The Oxford Waits have performed at a wealth of festivals, churches, theatres and arts centres, as well as featuring on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. In 2006 they performed before her Majesty the Queen at the Royal Opening of Oxford Castle.

Caroline Butler

‘A great show… terrific entertainment’ Brian Kay, BBC Radio 3

‘Hugely enjoyable, great entertainment and appealing to a wide age range.'
Chris Jaeger, Speaking Volumes Huntingdon Hall, Worcester

'What an explosion of vitality... a packed audience not only loved it but raised the roof with a round performance of Great Tom is Cast.'
Hugh Vickers, Oxford Times reviewer at the Holywell Music Room

'A fantastic evening, enjoyed by everybody - to a full house.'
Sam Prince, Folly Roots director at The Old Crown Coaching Inn, Faringdon

'A thoroughly delightful evening's entertainment and good fellowship'
Stratford-upon-Avon Herald (review of our show at Shakespeare's Church)

Edward Fitzgibbon

In 2001, Tim and other members of the Oxford Waits presented a half hour BBC radio programme on the story of Britain's waits bands with Dr James Merrywether of the York Waits. The programme was part of Tim's radio series 'At Home with Healey,' recorded and produced by Testbed Productions. It was broadcast on 1st April and 11th September 2001, on BBC Radio 4. You can listen in below...

The Town Waits - At Home with Healey - YouTube

3 full length CDs are currently available from Beautiful Jo  Records  www.beautifuljorecords.co.uk 

Love's Holyday

Switter Swatter

Hey for Christmas

Also available by download from iTunes, Amazon, Play, Napster, HMV Digital

Oxford Waits Live EP is a 17-minute recording from the Oxford Waits debut concert at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, Monday 31 July 2000. Available by mail order from Beautiful Jo Records, and at concerts.

Ian Giles

Bands of waits appeared in British cities during the Middle Ages. Employed to sound the hours on wind instruments, they later developed more varied activities, entertaining royalty at banquets, for example, and townsfolk on days of rejoicing. The original Oxford Waits performed in the reign of Elizabeth I and reached their heyday in the 17th century - the era of the English Civil War - playing on throughout the Commonwealth and Restoration periods. Professional musicians, they supplemented their income by other means; some ran alehouses and gave dancing lessons in the city. On civic occasions they played at 'Penniless Bench' at Carfax, wearing handsome livery cloaks and bossed silver badges. A country dance tune called the Oxford Waits has survived from the early 18th century - it is a cebell or English gavotte and evidently dates from the latter days of Oxford's waits band which appears to have fallen into decline around 1712.

Bagpiper Andy Letcher, always a welcome addition to the Waits team

Tim Healey is a freelance writer and broadcaster http://www.bejo.co.uk/tim/html/page1.htm

Ian Giles plays with Oxfordshire five-piece Magpie Lane http://www.magpielane.co.uk/

Caroline Butler plays with English ceildh band Geckoes http://www.geckoes.co.uk/

Giles Lewin & Ian Giles, two mainstays of the Swyndelstock team

Besides directing the Oxford Waits, Tim Healey also leads the mediaeval band, Swyndelstock. From lusty dances and drinking songs to the haunted airs of the troubadors, Swyndelstock evokes the turbulent reality of mediaeval life.

Drawing on a pool of musicians skilled on lute, fiddle, bagpipes, hurdy gurdy, pipe & tabor and more, Swyndelstock appears in different combinations.

The band is available both for incidental music and for formal concerts in music and spoken word. Tel. 01865 249194

The band takes its name from the famous Swyndelstock tavern, which flourished at the heart of mediaeval Oxford from about AD 1250 to the late 17th century. Named after the wooden swinging part of a flax flail , the rowdy tavern stood on Carfax, the crossroads in the city centre, and saw the outbreak of the city's most notorious town vs gown riot. On l0th February (St Scholastica's Day) 1355, a party of scholars drinking in the tavern complained about the quality of the wine. The taverner replied with 'stubborn and saucy language', and the scholars 'broke his head with a flagon'. The wine-merchant rallied the townsfolk, and in three days of mayhem pitched battles ensued.