Anchored in the conviviality of 18th-century Annapolis, this candlelit concert draws from the seasonal music, dance, and poetry that enlivened colonial homes during the Twelve Days of Christmas. Now in its tenth year, this beloved Twelfth Night tradition opens the nation’s 250th anniversary year with spirited songs that reflect both elite and popular customs of winter festivity in the early Republic.

Fireside Revelry recreates the warmth and mischief of Annapolis’s historic parlors with English glees and catches, Scottish airs long favored in Virginia, traditional wassail and feast songs, and American parlor works by Francis Hopkinson—the first composer of secular song in the colonies. At its center stands William Billings’s stirring I Am the Rose of Sharon, a richly layered anthem by the “father of American choral music.”

Interwoven with toasts, diary entries, and seasonal verse, this tenth-anniversary program celebrates a decade of Twelfth Night concerts at Hammond-Harwood House, while honoring the blend of elegance, revelry, and patriotic spirit that shaped music-making in early America.