Silk and satin theatre programmes were frequently produced in the 18th and 19th centuries to commemorate special theatrical and musical events, the less expensive ones with integral fringing on two edges, and the more expensive with separately applied silk or metallic fringes. This programme was produced for a concert by the Glasgow Select Choir in aid of the Leeds Charities, and was attended by several prominent local dignitaries including Sir Lyon Playfair (1818-1898), member of parliament for Leeds South from 1885 to 1892; Herbert John Gladstone (1854-1930) the youngest son of William Gladstone who himself became Home Secretary in 1906, and Mayor of Leeds in 1885 and 1886; Alderman Edwin Gaunt (1818-1903), who was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1887 and of whom a portrait painted by Marmaduke Flower in 1892 is in the collection of Leeds Art Gallery.
The concert took place at the Coliseum, Leeds, a gabled sandstone building on Cookridge Street, originally designed by the architect William Bakewell in 1882 to house spectacular events such as circus but eventually opened in July 1885 as a general purpose town hall seating as many as 4,000. It was therefore a relatively new building when the concert by the Glasgow Select Choir, established in 1872, took place. The concert comprised twenty Scottish songs with an interval, including the lyrical <i>Afton Water</i>, the stirring <i>Corn Rigs</i>, both with words by Robert Burns, and the traditional <i>Scots Wha Ha'e</i> and <i>Auld Lang Syne</i>. The choristers and any accompanying musicians are not named but the conductor was John Millar Craig, conductor of the Scottish Select Choir for twenty years and the first conductor of the Edinburgh Bach Choir, from 1910-1911.