Under its present leader, Edward Higginbottom, New College Choir has gained an international reputation, performing in Europe and beyond several times a year. It was created 600 years ago in order to provide a sung liturgy in one of Oxford's finest chapels, and the best place to hear this remarkable choir remains their own home, where they perform from the choir stalls midway down the nave. This allows the listener to hear the two parts of the choir coming from either side, enhancing the effect of a chapel reverberating with sound.

The highlight of its latest concert was a specially commissioned work by Nikki Yeoh, a jazz composer. It was fitting that the other works in the programme were also contemporary rather than more traditional choral works. It was a wonderfully varied evening with, for example, Christus Vincit by James Macmillan in which the dense harmonies gave an extraordinary intensity culminating in a moving and brilliant treble solo, and the much more homophonic but still climactic Into thy Hands by Jonathan Dove.

The premire performance of Nikki Yeoh's River Spirit was given from the altar rather than the choir, which emphasised the texture of the music. Using the different sonorities and timbres of the voices in the choir to produce a depth and diversity of phrasing that contrasted remarkably with what came before and after. Yeoh seemed able to transform the choir into an orchestra without in any way debasing its choral signature, using the piano at the end to heighten this effect. It was a moving experience backed by the knowledge that the work sprang from Yeoh's response to the near death of her newly born son.

This was a concert that reaffirmed the emotion and beauty that can be engendered by a truly great choir singing equally fine music.