BBC Four Sessions

BBC Four celebrates merry midwinter in unique style, with an exhilarating blend of folk tradition and burlesque fun. Energetic 11-piece Bellowhead and Mercury-nominated alternative folkies The Unthanks get together with the impressive young singers Thea Gilmore and Lisa Knapp, plus other special guests. Steered by genial host Paul Sartin, the assembled artists perform seasonal songs of their own alongside yuletide favourites, ranging from folk ballads and carols to parlour songs and carousing dance numbers, with everyone coming together for a final knees-up. Filmed at the atmospheric Shoreditch Town Hall, the setting evokes an old music hall combined with a festive Victorian family parlour, bedecked with garlands, period lamps and fireplace. Even the audience are dressed up in old-fashioned finery and prove themselves ready to kick up their heels.

Highlights of a unique gathering of eclectic artists at Air Studios in London to celebrate the songs and composers of the Great American Songbook. Paolo Nutini sings the classic composition Nature Boy, popularised by Nat King Cole, and has fun with the songs of Louis Prima. Melody Gardot enigmatically explores the songbooks of Cole Porter and Harold Arlen, while Claire Martin swings it and performs classic songs by Rogers and Hart and Irving Berlin. Sharleen Spiteri presents her accomplished interpretation of the Billie Holiday classic God Bless the Child and Gwyneth Herbert reinterprets the Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn classic Love Me or Leave Me with loops and beats. Jose James delivers a smooth and swinging version of Just Squeeze Me, a song made popular by Duke Ellington, while Krystle Warren performs a bluesy version of Cole Porter's risque Love for Sale and a string-laden performance of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. The session is a celebration of the music and popular songs of the famous and prolific American composers of the 1920s and onwards. Composers such as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen, Rogers and Hammerstein and Hoagy Carmichael, to name but a few - composers who wrote the tunes of Broadway theatre and Hollywood musicals that earned enduring popularity before the dawning of rock n roll. These songwriters have penned songs which have entered the general consciousness and which are now best described as standards - tunes which every musician and singer aspires to include in their repertoire, such as Over the Rainbow, Cheek to Cheek, Love for Sale, Love Me or Leave Me, Get Out of Town and The Lady Is A Tramp.

An all-star cast celebrates the influence of reggae on the UK's music and culture in a live concert coinciding with BBC Four's Reggae Britannia documentary season. Expect to hear hits from the 1960s to the present day telling the story of the musical evolution from ska, through rocksteady, roots, dub, lovers rock and beyond. Music director Dennis Bovell assembles a big band featuring some of the most important reggae musicians in the British scene to back up a star cast of singers and toasters including Big Youth, Ken Boothe, Neville Staple, Ali Campbell, Dave Barker, Brinsley Forde, Dennis Alcapone and Winston Reedy, Pauline Black, Janet Kay, Carroll Thompson and Rico Rodriguez. The concert celebrates the journey that captured the turmoil and channelled the dreams of Jamaicans who came to Britain, those who were born here and the white kids who grew up alongside them and embraced their culture and their roots.