The programme comprises:

Old American Songs – Aaron Copland’s playfully recreation of hymns including the Shaker Simple Gifts and songs of the American folk tradition.

Chichester Psalms – Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy, tuneful and urban musical idioms set to six psalms, sung in Hebrew. In combining Hebrew texts and Christian choral traditions in a commission for the Chichester Festival, Bernstein was implicitly issuing a plea for peace in Israel during a turbulent time in the young country’s history.

Agnus Dei – Samuel Barber’s arrangement of the text to his sublime and uplifting Adagio for Strings.