DERBY Concert Orchestra's Family Christmas Concert this year features a popular selection of film music, much of it with a space exploration flavour.

The imposing start of Richard Strauss' tone-poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (famously borrowed for Stanley Kubrick's 2001) sets the mood.

There are also excerpts from three classic John Williams scores – Apollo 13, Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – and there's Howard Blake's music for The Snowman.

Other orchestral pieces include A Christmas Festival by Leroy Anderson – with favourites such as Deck the Halls, Joy to the World, God Rest You Merry Gentlemen and others spliced together and scored with all Anderson's usual skill – and Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 4.

This year, for the first time, the boys of the Cathedral Choir are taking part, singing music by JS Bach, Peter Warlock, Howard Goodall and – in what must be a first for them – Elton John (Can You Feel the Love Tonight? from The Lion King).

All proceeds go to the St. Benedict Enhanced Resource Base for Sight and Physically impaired pupils.

Derby Concert Orchestra is at Derby Cathedral on Saturday, December 12 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £12 (£10 concessions), accompanied under-16s free from the Cathedral Shop on 01332 341201, ext 41 or Foulds on 01332 344842.

Mike Wheeler

THE Sitwell Singers are presenting their Christmas concert twice, as usual.

Not afraid to stray well off the beaten track, they include a healthy percentage of more unusual pieces in a programme that stretches back to the 16th century.

One of the great Renaissance Christmas motets, Victoria's O Magnum Mysterium, rubs shoulders with O Nata Lux by contemporary American composer Morten Lauridsen. There's a lively early work by Britten, The Sycamore Tree; two pieces by Bob Chilcott: Remember O Thou Man and the exciting Nova! Nova; Grieg's lovely Ave Maris Stella; and O Little Town of Bethlehem by Walford Davies. Conductor Malcolm Goldring contributes two of his own arrangements – Silent Night, and Irving Berlin's White Christmas.

The singers are joined by organist Edmund Stow and there will be readings, as well as wine and mince pies.

Sitwell Singers are at All Saints' Church, Sudbury, on Saturday, December 12 at 7.30pm, and St John's Church, Mill Street, Derby, on Monday, December 14. Tickets £8, under-16s free, from Foulds, Irongate, on 01332 344842, or on 01332 662519.

Mike Wheeler