CANTORES Olicanae are making great strides under the guidance of their new musical director, Charlie Perry. Their concert on Saturday showed a choir that is gaining in assurance and enjoying its singing and that, of course, imparted itself to us, the audience, who left feeling uplifted.

Much of the success of a concert lies in the selection of repertoire and this one was built around two sets of popular or folk songs from the two sides of the Atlantic. First came four English folk songs from John Rutter’s selection Sprig of Thyme, with all his characteristic simplicity of form and immediate appeal. The singers were really at home in these pieces, effortlessly alternating well blended unisons with hummed accompaniments and well-balanced harmonies, although the angular nature of the tunes, as in The Willow Tree, presented a bit of a challenge. The selection from Copland’s Old American Songs in the second half were decidedly more challenging with their high vocal lines and open harmonies but even here the choir made the most of the animal noises in I bought me a cat and the lively rhythms of Ching-a-Ring Chaw.

In fact rhythmic accuracy was one of the really strong points of the choir’s performances – notably in Edlund’s Ant han dansa met mej (sung in Swedish!) and America from West Side Story. The other was the balance between the parts, the women making appropriate allowance for the less numerous men, in the slower close harmony pieces, such as Sullivan’s The long day closes and Bob Chilcott’s emotionally charged arrangement of the Billy Joel classic And so it goes.

Zoë Jackson was a reliable soprano soloist, entertaining in Adelaide’s Aria by Jonathan Dove and affecting in Barber’s Solitary Hotel. She was also the soloist in a performance of Stanford’s The Bluebird, where I would have preferred a purer soprano sound to balance the choral harmonies. Robert Sudall was, as ever, an excellent accompanist. The laurels, though, should go to Charlie Perry for the choice of programme, his engaging introductions and his work with this improving choir.