AT the core of the National Centre for Early Music’s autumn and winter season in York will be the centenary celebrations of composer Benjamin Britten.

To mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, both the September to January programme and the 2013 York Early Music Christmas Festival will feature Britten works.

On October 17, special guest reader Sir Derek Jacobi will join jazz singer Ruth Culver and the Utter:Jazz Quartet for Look Stranger, in which Utter:Jazz will weave swing, samba, blues and grooves through their vibrant re-imaginings of Benjamin Britten’s WH Auden songs.

Britten’s harmonic soundscapes and Auden’s political lyrics will be given new arrangements in 12 songs, including Stop All The Clocks. Actor Sir Derek Jacobi will read romantic, satirical and politically charged Auden poems between songs.

Harry Christophers’ celebrated choir The Sixteen have sung regularly in York but will be making their first appearance at the Christmas festival to perform Britten’s Ceremony of Carols at York Minster on December 12. Tickets are selling fast already.

The NCEM will continue its fruitful links with fellow concert promoters Kala Sangam, the Black Swan Folk Club and Making Tracks, which takes a travelling programme of new and exciting world music to 12 British venues.

Kala Sangam will bring Magical Melodies to York in the opening concert of the new season on September 21, when multi-instrumentalist and composer Vijay Venkat will perform South Indian classical music, known as Carnatic.

Black Swan Folk Club programmer Roland Walls will present English trio Fautus on September 27. After a two-year break, Saul Rose, Benji Kirkpatrick and Paul Sartin are taking to the road with a new album, Broken Down Gentlemen.

A further Black Swan/NCEM collaboration on October 30 will feature the new line-up of Scottish group Breabach, fronted by the bagpipes and whistles of Calum MacCrimmon and James Duncan Mackenzie and the fiddle, step-dance and lead vocals of Megan Henderson.

Making Tracks will offer a Buy One Get One Free ticket deal for innovative percussionist Adriano Adewale and Brazilian Benjamin Taubkin’s October 10 and Mali kora player Ballaké Sissoko’s November 23 performance of pieces from At Peace, his new album that contrasts the peacefulness of his harp music with the turmoil of his homeland.

In addition, Adewale and Taubkin will hold an afternoon workshop for York St John University world music students.

Richard Durrant, alias the Guitar Whisperer, will be joined by special guest Howard Beach on keyboards for his October 11 programme of JS Bach, Django Reinhardt, folk dances for guitar and laptop and a tribute to Freddie Phillips, composer of the Trumpton and Camberwick Green theme tunes.

In Declaration Kriol on October 18, jazz ensemble Rafiki Jazz will re-work multi-lingual texts from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, delivered by singers and rappers and a unique vocalist singing a new digitally created Kriol (creole) language.

Students from Burnholme Community College and Joseph Rowntree School will be working with saxophonist Snake Davis on a six-week project run by Music4U and the NCEM, which will culminate in The Cobra Club performance by musicians and dancers at 3pm on October 26.

The project has involved 50 students – a mixture of instrumentalists, singers and dancers – working together to form a new Snake Davis band. Helped by jazz musician Sue Williamson, Burnholme’s head of music, and by Leeds College of Music graduates Declan Forde, Will Howard, Angus Milne and Matt Parkinson, they are learning Snake’s jazz, funk and soul standards and writing their own songs for the October show.

It is hoped TheCobra Club will perform with the Snake Davis Band at his evening concert on October 26, when he will showcase his new Missing You album.

As part of the Illuminating York Festival, Manasamitra will present a son et lumiere musical experience, Shivoham: Luminosity, featuring vocalist Supriya Nagarajan, South Indian contemplative chants and early music and state-of-the-art lighting technology and projections.

Jazz pianist Jamil Sheriff is better known for his octet and his big band album Ichthyology but switches to a trio format with drummer Dave Walsh and double bass player Peter Turner on November 8, and the following night Julian Rowlands’ Orquesta Tangazo combines members of Tango Siempre with the Sigamos String Quartet to recreate the sound of the Argentinean orchestras of tango’s golden age from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The new NCEM student bursary scheme to support young early music musicians will be launched at A Venetian Extravaganza, a candle-lit evening of music, mystery and magic, a three-course dinner and wines on November 29. The dress code will be Venetian masks and costumes or dinner jackets and colourful evening dress.

The American tenor saxophone player Keith Loftis is making his British debut with the Saxophone Giants, performing alongside Jean Toussaint in A Tribute To Jazz’s Greatest Saxophonists on December 1.

In the lead-up to Christmas, York Musical Theatre Company will present A Partridge In A Pear Tree on December 17 and York Opera, Realms Of Glory on December 20.

More details of the Christmas festival will be announced in What’s On next Thursday.

• Tickets for the new season and festival are on sale on 01904 658338 or at ncem.co.uk