A new West Dorset choral group - Parnham Voices - gave their debut concert to a delighted audience in Thorncombe Church on Sunday 16 March 2003.

Under the direction of their inspirational conductor, John Mingay, this new choir of experienced singers gave a wide-ranging programme of sacred and secular music that held its audience enthralled. This was a lively and highly enjoyable evening in which the voices of the seven men and nine women making up the ensemble blended in delightful harmony in four, five and six parts across an extraordinarily wide repertoire.

The programme began with some of the most beautiful English sacred music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the masters of this genre such as Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, to which the choir was especially suited, and it was a particular delight to hear works by lesser known composers of the same period.

John Mingay performed two short exquisite organ pieces by Byrd and Pellegrini and the first half of the programme concluded with one of Palestrina’s settings of the Mass.

Palestrina is generally regarded as the greatest of all the Renaissance composers, and it has been said that his music is as easy to perform as to listen to. It is, in fact, with its ingenious counterpoint and many exposed parts, particularly demanding and was an ambitious choice for even such an accomplished group as Parnham Voices.

It was in the second half of this varied programme that the choir showed its full versatility, however, with pieces by English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and even American composers, largely of the twentieth century. This talented group adapted its style with apparent ease as it moved from Hindemith and Poulenc at one end of the spectrum to a delightful setting of Cole Porter’s Oscar-winning Night and Day at the other end.

Parnham Voices deserve an Oscar themselves for the infectious enthusiasm and musicality with which they approached this wide range of styles. And in amongst it all one of their number, Sarah Ryerson, gave a sensitive and elegant performance of two movements from Marcello’s Concerto in C minor for clarinet accompanied by John Mingay at the organ.