Christmas is coming: the St John's Smith Square Christmas festival starts today

You know when the run up to Christmas has really begun when the St John's Smith Square Christmas Festival starts. This year is the 30th festival and there are 14 events starting tonight (11 December 2015) with the Choir of King's College, London conducted by Joseph Fort in a programme which pairs Robert Carver's 19 part motet O bone Jesu with James MacMillan's modern response to it, plus music by Kenneth Leighton and Poulenc. 

Other events include Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars in Tallis's seven-part Missa Puer natus est nobis, Chapelle du Roi with music written during the marriage of Mary Tudor and Philip of Spain, and Solomon’s Knot with Christmas in Leipzig, plus the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, Ex Cathedra, Ensemble Plus Ultra, the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, the National Youth Music Theatre,  Siglo de Oro, and The Choir of Merton College, Oxford. 

Messiah is an annual fixture, performed by Polyphony and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with Katharine Watson, Iestyn Davies, Gwilym Bowen and Neal Davies conducted by Stephen Layton. And the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge perform Bach's Mass in B Minor with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Stephen Layton.

Full information from the St John's Smith Square website.