Mass in Blue, at Durham Cathedral, on Saturday night.
It's easy to trace the source of Durham-born composer Will Todd's growing popularity among choral societies and their audiences. The strong narrative and spiritual content of large-scale works like Saint Cuthbert and The Burning Road, place them firmly in the English choral tradition.
But there is also Todd the jazz player - improvising on piano, sax and clarinet - whose Mass in Blue brings together two traditions in "a hybrid style that might be described as religious doctrine meets funk!"
Others have done similar things: notably Tippett in his oratorio A Child of Our Time and Bernstein's liberal use of jazz/blues idioms. But Todd is sufficiently his own man to do it his way, setting the Latin mass in the six-movement form that has been the standard since the 14th Century.
The Hertfordshire Chorus, who commissioned the work last year, was joined by the Durham Singers for what was effectively a huge gospel choir. They sang magnificently in a blend of full-throated choruses and tricky counterpoints while soprano Bethany Halliday brought an engaging sense of improvised freedom to the solos.
Conductor David Temple directed a vibrant performance - though even his admirable control of tempo and dynamics couldn't quite tame the amplified instruments and solo voice in the booming acoustics of Durham Cathedral.
Perhaps another hearing would fully persuade me that the Latin text sings well in a jazz/blues style but maybe some said similarly of Brahms' setting of passages from the Lutheran Bible for his Ein Deutsches Requiem, back in 1869.
Again, Temple, the choir and Durham Sinfonia orchestra gave a finely measured performance along with the clear-voiced Halliday and strongly developing baritone of 23-year-old North-Easterner Andrew Ashwin.
