The Cathedral Singers, Christ Church Cathedral’s mixed-voice voluntary choir, is an accomplished ensemble and, under its director, Hilary Punnett, an adventurous one. In a carefully curated sequence commissioned for its New Music Project 2020, Grayston Ives’s Missa Aedis Christi (‘Christ Church Mass’) takes pride of place. Ancient and modern combine, with quasi-plainchant vocal melodies over sustained, almost Romantic organ harmonies. In contrast is the rhythmic drive of much of the Gloria and the starkly austere start to the Agnus Dei.

Four commissioned anthems include Bertie Baigent’s Rise heart and Alison Willis’s Regina Caeli, both for Easter, and Ben Rowarth’s A New Year Carol, which combines the warmth of the Levy-Dew text used by Britten with Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the freezing little match girl. Sarah Rimkus sets verses from Psalm 139, Genesis and Exodus in The God who sees me, the title being the words of Hagar when she became the first person in the Bible to name God.

David Bednall’s A hymn of George Bell, James Potter’s Alternative Canticles (setting Cantate Domino and Deus Misereatur) and two organ pieces, ‘Lauda Sion’ from Anthony Gray’s An Aquinian Sequence and Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Toccata, written for Simon Hogan, complete a CD that celebrates the results of this imaginative project.