For a well-crafted anthology of great sacred choral music, one could do no better than trying this lovely new album from one of the States’ leading chamber choirs, the Rhode Island-based Ensemble Altera. Their director, Christopher Lowrey, trained under one of the world’s finest choir directors, Stephen Layton, at Trinity College, Cambridge. Quality is therefore assured.

British composers predominate, starting with Jonathan Dove’s classic Seek him, a scintillating opener, complete with a demanding organ accompaniment. London-born John Rutter is no stranger to North America. His 1992 double-choir motet Hymn to the Creator of Light was composed for the unveiling of a window in Gloucester Cathedral to Herbert Howells. This deeply affectionate tribute shows Rutter at his most harmonically astringent, a far cry from the benign gentleness of, for example, For the Beauty of the Earth.

Three settings of the Compline text ‘Te lucis ante terminum’ provide telling contrasts. That by Tallis, published in the 1575 collection Cantiones sacrae, is sung by just the male voices. Although the 2023 version by Michael Garrepy (Ensemble Altera’s Artistic Advisor and Composer-in-Residence) draws deeply from the well of Catholic tradition, he is not afraid to be daringly modern – witness the final cadence, which alone is worth the price of the album. Matthew Martin (b1976) takes the melody of Tone VIII and weaves a delicious four-part choral texture around it, and provides an intriguing Francis Pott-like organ part.

The introit Dominus illuminatio by David Hill (b1957) also has a timeless quality, more akin to the tradition of William Harris’s solidly dependable Bring us, O Lord, another double-chorus beauty, dating from 1959.

More dramatic approaches to the theme of light come from the pens of Toby Young (b1990, Professor of Composition at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama) and Ko Matsushita (b1962). The latter’s O lux beata Trinitas brings a welcome increase in the disc’s tempo, as does In principio for double chorus by the South African Motshwane Pege (b1998). Awarded first prize in the 2023 Ensemble Altera Composition Competition, this fresh voice is notable for his beautifully layered textures.

The programme winds down gently with Eric Whitacre’s Sleep and John Cameron’s choral arrangement of Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’, all sung exquisitely. Finest of all, perhaps, is the Nunc dimittis from Howells’s opulent St Paul’s Service (1950). A treasurable recording.