THE prospect of a normally strait-laced chamber choir teaming up with a jazz group in music by Byrd was too much to resist. Would it work? Could it? In a church? The saints might be twirling in their graves.

Blue Masses, said the programme, which immediately conjured visions of… your fertile imaginations can do the rest. In the event, no-one needed a hood and there were some very upright citizens in the audience. A few, anyway.

Byrd got off pretty lightly. His Mass For Four Voices was allowed to speak for itself. The jazz quartet – sax, bass and drums, with Todd himself at the piano – chipped into the gaps, commenting gently on strands two from the preceding section. Only in the Agnus Dei did instruments briefly overlap with voices. Quite pleasingly, too.

The choir might have allowed a little more light and shade into their polyphony, though Peter Collis’s expansive beat seemed to prefer forthright delivery. He got it. The band then let its hair down in a lively take on Give Me Joy.

The conjunction of jazz and Latin may have jarred on some ears, but Will Todd’s Mass In Blue found the choir excellently attuned to its rhythms.

Bethany Halliday’s soprano injected some descant-style riffs. Not all of the music had much to do with the texts, but a boogie Credo, a bluesy Sanctus and a chaconne Benedictus were zesty enough. And no graves opened.