The Song Company presents Lully Lulla at Wesley Uniting Church, Forrest

Antony Pitts, The Song Company's artistic director, says, "This is a Christmas concert with a kind of twist. It's based around a medieval pageant, The Shearmen and Tailors Pageant in a very old dramatic tradition – at least 500 years old."

But woven into the program is music from many ages, right up to contemporary Australian composition with a selection of music by Brian Kogler, a musician who lives on the Central NSW coast and has written hundreds of rounds and canons and by organist and composer Calvin Bowman.

The concert takes its title, Lully Lulla, from the refrain of the Coventry Carol, a song arranged by Thomas Mawdycke in 1591 from the medieval mystery play.

Pitts says, "What's interesting about the drama of the story is that while some of it is solemn and mystical, other parts are quite earthy. There'll be movement, using the spaces as best we can to get the drama across. You can imagine the pageant being played out on the streets of medieval England – like the funny bit where Joseph realises that Mary is pregnant by another man and he's not happy about it."

Pitts explains that the ensemble will be reciting text between the carols and other pieces and that they will use as near as possible the pronunciation of that time,

"So that's getting us back into the sound world," he says.

"The old spellings of English have come down to us from the Middle Ages so that gives us some clues to the pronunciation."

Pitts says that the concert will be a substantial and rich one and that there will be an uninterrupted sequence of music in both halves.

"I want to make it a full, unfolding flow. The Coventry Carol is the culmination on the concert – such a beautiful piece in itself but it also has a really unusual musical dissonance which is probably the reason that people down the centuries have responded to it without knowing why. Of course the story itself is heartbreaking with a really bitter twist with the story of Herod in Bethlehem. That ends all of the joy and happiness, the comfort and joy of Christmas."

Pitts says that he wants the audience to feel the real tension between the exuberant joy with the happy, upbeat harmonies and the heartrending sadness of other parts of the story. We might also reflect on the contemporary world situation, on the plight of refugees, on exile and "the slaughter of innocents".

Pitts says that he always tries to find a very different way of presenting the traditional Christmas story. "There's always lots of competition for sure with Christmas concerts and this year too we're touring later than usual. There'll be traditional carols, both English and Australian, that everyone recognises but there'll also be plenty of new things, gems that people won't know. The whole program hasn't yet been finalised but there'll be music by David Hood (The Shearer's Wife) John Duggan (A Babe born bare) William Byrd (A Carole for Christmas Day and Lullaby, my sweet little Baby) and W.G James. There may be some surprises too.

"The Gloria in excelsis that we're doing is one by the 15th-century composer John Dunstable who was really a kind of godfather of the Renaissance. It's from his music that basically most of Western harmony has been influenced although many people may not know that. This Gloria is in four parts and it's just very exciting. It bounces around and changes rhythm quite suddenly between sections. I always get goosebumps when I hear it. And of course we're using selections from The Song Company's perennial Call for Scores."

There will be six singers in the ensemble.

"That's particularly suitable for this program," Pitts says, "because there's a lot of three-part music so we have the women doing three-part trios, kind of answered by three-part trios by the men. A lot of music from the Middle Ages is in three parts."

Regular member of the group soprano Susannah Lawergren, who has just had a baby, will be replaced in this concert by young artist Chloe Lankshear. Pitts says, "I came across Chloe when The Song Company worked with the Canberra group, Luminescence. I conducted both groups together at the Canberra Festival last year."

It will be tenor Richard Black's last appearance with the group.

"He's contributed so much to the group over the years," Pitts says, "but he feels that it's time now to move on. I'm really pleased that Richard's going out on this sort of program because there are lots of resonances with his expertise here with Early Music and pronunciation and tuning."

Mezzo soprano Hannah Fraser who has been in Europe for most of this year is rejoining the group for this tour. The other performers will be soprano Anna Fraser, baritone Mark Donnelly and bass Andrew O'Connor.

Pitts says, "It's been a very busy year and very contrasting in terms of what we've done, from my chamber opera to St John Passion and even audience improvisation so Lully Lulla comes at the end of a very colourful season."