The Choir will perform a varied program of favorite English carol arrangements and compositions, and John Tavener’s Ex Maria Virgine: A Christmas Sequence comprises the centerpiece of the second half of the concert. Director Graham Ross writes: “Ten years ago the Choir of Clare College and my predecessor Timothy Brown commissioned a new Christmas sequence from John Tavener, which was to become one of his last major choral works before his death in 2013. Tavener attended the first complete performance, given by the Choir in Cambridge in December 2008. The Philadelphia performance of Ex Maria Virgine: A Christmas Sequence, a decade on from its completion, sits alongside other settings of the same texts that Tavener assembled for his celebration of ‘Mary the Mother of God – The Eternal Feminine’. This allows for a programme that spans from Mediæval male-voice polyphony and one of John Sheppard’s Renaissance masterpieces to more recent works by Tavener’s fellow class-mate at London’s Highgate School, John Rutter, and arrangements by the late David Willcocks, another giant of the choral world who passed away earlier this year at the age of 95."