If you’re in search of an album of choral music that embraces the rich diversity and encyclopaedic range of the world’s vocal and choral traditions, look no further than the debut release of the Echo Vocal Ensemble, formed following their involvement in the Genesis Sixteen programme (run by Harry Christophers and The Sixteen). ‘Innocence’ is far more than a whistle-stop tour around the historical block. From the very opening lines of Hildegard of Bingen’s O nobilissima viriditas it’s clear that director Sarah Latto and her group of talented singers have done their homework on the repertoire assiduously and thoroughly. These performances are crafted with skill, flair, understanding, passion and respect for the traditions to which they belong.

Hildegard’s responsory forms a connecting thread across the album, its five statements offering both contrasts and connections with the music that surround it. First up is mid-20th-century composer Pierre Villette’s Hymne à la Vierge, its subtle chromatic shifts prompting an almost barbershop-style sound from Echo, while the quadruple canon supporting Jean Mouton’s magisterial Nesciens mater inhabits the liminal spaces that lie between homophony, heterophony and polyphony in a sound that’s surprisingly symphonic for an ensemble comprising only 13 singers.

Full-blown polyphony duly arrives towards the end of the album in the shape of Palestrina’s I vaghi fiori, and in between these two Renaissance peaks we are taken on a colourful journey from Shivani Rattan’s celebratory, Diwali-inspired Patake!, via brief but imaginative encounters with English, Scottish and Greek folk arrangements, to some brilliantly conceived and executed pop-song adaptations. The first of these arrives in the form of a group improvisation on The Beatles’ ‘I’m only sleeping’ – its drowsy, druggy dreaminess yielding the most horizontal round you’re ever likely to hear. This is followed a little later by an equally effective rendition of The Smiths’ ‘There is a light that never goes out’, undercut (as Thom Andrewes puts it in an informative set of booklet notes) by the bitter disillusionment of Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide and seek’.

Anna Rocławska-Musiałczyk’s Bibi, Synkù, bi is one of many unexpected surprises on the album, harnessing folk and pop elements alongside the composer’s nuanced understanding of choral writing, while Purcell’s harmonies in the choir’s adaptation of ‘Hush, no more’ from The Fairy Queen sounds surprisingly modern in places. Echo also get their teeth firmly into Ravel’s Trois Chansons, imparting plenty of bite, urgency and trepidation to a set of songs written at the outbreak of the First World War. A warm blanket of sound envelops Howard Skempton’s He wishes for the cloths of Heaven, while a childlike ritualistic quality imbues Meredith Monk’s ebullient Panda Chant II. All in all, an impressive debut from a choir from whom I’m sure we will hear far more in the future.