CENTURIES of choral music will be celebrated by a Malvern choir next month.

Aldwyn Voices will be performing a programme entitled 'From Plainsong to Tavener - A Thousand Years of European Choral Music', at the Perrins Hall, Royal Grammar School, Worcester, on Wednesday, May 16.

The concert, which starts at 8pm, will be conducted by James Vivian with Carleton Etherington at the organ.

The programme will include music from the 12th Century Worcester Fragments, as well as works by Bach, Mozart, Byrd and Elgar. Aldwyn Voices was formed in 1968 by Peter Smith and has gained recognition as one of Britain's leading provincial choral groups.

It has performed at music festivals across the country, broadcast on Radio Three and Four and commissioned new works from composers such as Rory Boyle and Edmund Rubbra.

Its regular contribution to the BBC World Service, a Christmas Day broadcast of music and literature from Tewkesbury Abbey, is heard globally by some 25 million listeners.

The choir's conductor, James Vivian, is a former organ scholar at King's College, Cambridge, and has appeared at Westminster Cathedral and Abbey, and St Paul's Cathedral.

Carleton Etherington, who studied at the Royal Academy of Music, is currently organist and master of the choristers at Tewkesbury Abbey.

Tickets for the concert, costing £8, are available from Nigel Lowson at the school.

Aldwyn Voices will also perform later in the year in the Autumn in Malvern festival, with a programme of works by Gerald Finzi and Toru Takemitsu.

The festival, the artistic director of which is Peter Smith, has been held annually since 1989 and each year, contrasts English music, art and literature with that of another nation. The 2001 festival will be presenting Japanese and English music, and will include a major concert with the Britten Sinfonia.