Spa Orchestra to play its annual New Year's Day concert

The music will begin at 3pm in the Spa Grand Hall on New Year’s Day.

All the pieces will be from composers who found fame and fortune in Vienna and the most important of these is Johann Strauss.

HisBlue Danube Waltz will feature as will one his liveliest and best-known pieces, the Thunder and Lightning Polka.

There will be gentler and quieter items with some of these from the pen of Franz Lehar, another master of melody, and it will be his marvellous tunes which will close the afternoon with a selection from the Merry Widow.

Many more great tunes are promised as the Spa Orchestra takes to the stage for the first time since the summer season.

Musical director Paul Laidlaw will be at the helm and piano.

There will be more new year music when Hammonds Band returns to Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre on Sunday January 8

This year the band has recorded a new CD called Scarborough Fayre, dedicated to their Scarborough audiences and celebrating the 25 years they have played at the theatre.

The concert will feature music from the CD, some favourites and some which are new to Scarborough audiences.

Under the direction of Morgan Griffiths, Hammonds Band is now one of the country’s finest brass bands, performing in venues across the world.

Tickets to the Hammonds Band concert, priced from £10, are available from the box office on 01723 370541 and online at www.sjt.uk.com

Seasonal music comes, too, from pianist and composer Xander Armstrong. He is presenting a one-off show inside Scarborough's Market Vaults, St Helen’s Square, on Monday December 19 at 7pm.

The Seamstess: A Victorian Ghost Story is directed, narrated ad written by Cougar Nan Lang. It is is a story in rhyme about a poor widowed seamstress who is visited by her late betrothed partner three days before Christmas.

Doors open at 6:30pm and tickets are £10 on the door.