On this page you’ll find YouTube video clips of some of our recent (and not so recent) performances around the UK – and if you’d like to see all the clips we’ve posted so far, we’d love you to have a look at our complete Cantlos YouTube Channel.
Click on SUBSCRIBE while you’re watching any of the clips and YouTube will send you a notification whenever we post a new clip. Don’t panic, “subscribing” to our YouTube channel won’t cost you anything!
This is one of our favourite songs, The January Man, illuminated by Dave Goulder’s beautiful and poignant lyrics and brought to life by Kirsty’s ethereal harmonies:
Copyright © Dave Goulder 1970. Used by kind permission.
One of Robert Burns’ most well-known songs, Ye Banks and Braes, from 1792, in the Great Hall at The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire:
Cantlos finishing off a recent concert at The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay, with The Boar’s Head Carol from 1521, a secular Christmas carol which was probably well-known to King Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth. The instrument James is playing is a cittern, invented in Italy around 1500, while Kirsty is playing the Irish bodhrán or frame drum:
One of our favourite spooky songs – and one of the few we sing a cappella – is The Twa Corbies, a haunting ballad of loss and betrayal from the Scottish border country. Two crows (“corbies” in the Scottish dialect in which the song is written) are discussing the body of a slain knight they’ve spotted lying behind an earth wall (an “auld fail dyke”) and deciding who will feast on which bits of him. Yes, fairly gruesome stuff! It appears in Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published in 1802, but the song is probably medieval in origin. We sing it to the tune of the ancient Celtic battle hymn An Alarc’h (“The Swan”) from Brittany.
We’ve begun to include instrumentals for Celtic harp and guitar in our concerts, and this is The Moon of Beltane, a modern composition in the Celtic style by the amazingly talented American harpist and composer Janet Lanier:
Copyright © 2006 Janet Lanier (www.janetlanier.com). Used by kind permission.
This is Austin John Marshall’s beautifully evocative Dancing at Whitsun. Written in New York in the 1960s, the lyrics are an indictment of the carnage of the First World War, but the song was quickly adopted by the anti-Vietnam War movement in the USA. The words were written to the tune of the broadside ballad The Week Before Easter from 1663. This performance is from a concert in Winslow Public Hall:
Melody: Traditional (1663). Lyrics: Copyright © 1968 Austin John Marshall.
And this is The Marigold, a 17th Century seafaring song from Cornwall:
Cantlos singing the mystical medieval carol Down in Yon Forest at our concert Cast Off Winter’s Mantle at the Radcliffe Centre, University of Buckingham, England:
…and the Elizabethan song Serving Girl’s Holiday at the same concert:
Cantlos performing Greensleeves, Scarborough Fair, The Fields of Athenry and Just As the Tide Was a’ Flowing at the Radcliffe Centre, University of Buckingham, England:
Melody and Lyrics of The Fields of Athenry: Pete St John/Saint Music © 1975 (MCPS 073249278). Used by kind permission.
Cantlos performing The Skye Boat Song in Great Horwood Village Hall, Buckinghamshire:
Cantlos performing Sydney Carter’s mystical Carol of the Universe at the City Church of Christ the Cornerstone in Milton Keynes, England:
Cantlos performing the Manx Gaelic lullaby Little Red Bird in English translation at Woolstone Community Centre in Milton Keynes:
