For the first time since 2019, the ensemble will be performing some of their favorite Scottish and Irish tunes, and Christmas Carols in their favorite venue, The Great Hall, one of the most acoustically perfect halls in the United States.

With an all-star lineup including champion Scottish fiddlers, Ryan McKasson and Hanneke Cassel, Isaac Alderson on uileann pipes and Irish flutes, guitarist Jesse Langen, and Irish music legend, Jackie Moran on bodhran and banjo, (and local poet and musician Carolyn Surrick on viola da gamba), this is indeed one of the most beloved concerts of the holiday season here in Annapolis.

Founded in Annapolis in 1990, Ensemble Galilei has performed hundreds of concerts in forty-six states, recorded seventeen critically acclaimed CDs, has over twenty-four million streams on Spotify, has created touring special projects starting in 2003 partnering with The Hubble Space Telescope Institute, also partnering National Geographic in 2007, and collaborating with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010. Their collaboration with NPR’s Neal Conan and Anne Garrels in 2018-19 for “Between War and Here” was breathtaking and extraordinary. All of this, and they still come home for Christmas.

When musicians have been playing together for decades, it informs everything they do. The music is extraordinary, the arrangements are sublime, and the virtuosity on the stage is legendary.