Candlelit Carols with Kantos at St Ann’s Church

The choir that spent the autumn singing about the Pendle witch trials turns to jollier material, smuggling in a few curveballs among the festive classics at St Ann’s Church.

Jolly, but not too jolly. The big hitters – Once in Royal David’s City, Hark! The Herald-Angels Sing – are all present and correct, but so is the more contemplative side of the festive repertoire. Tavener’s The Lamb and Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium are modern classics of the hushed, candlelit kind, and they should make for something quite magical in the Grade I listed St Ann’s, Manchester’s second-oldest church.

The curveballs, though, are where Kantos shows its hand. Since Ellie Slorach founded the choir in 2015, Kantos has taken choral music into factory spaces and nightclubs, toured with Gary Numan and sung the chorus for the UK premiere of Pulitzer-winning opera Angel’s Bone – all while commissioning new work as keenly as it explores the canon.

So it’s only to be expected that between the standards sit newer settings and arrangements. Anna Disley-Simpson, a regular collaborator, sets Robert Frost’s wintry Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Jamie W. Hall contributes the lullaby Balulalow; and Slorach brings her own arrangement of Carol of the Bells.

Kantos has started a festive tradition of its own, too: a carol competition, back this year with Cecilia McDowall – one of the UK’s leading choral composers – as judge. The winning entry joins the programme, so at least one carol on the night will be new to everyone in the room.

This contemporary material is finely balanced with carols that are new to no-one in the room, because nobody is above White Christmas. And when the congregational carols come round, with Ben Collyer on the organ, be prepared to join in. Descants are, according to the choir, encouraged. It’d be rude not to.