“WE don’t hear much American choral music,” conductor Calvin Bowman told the sweltering audience gathered yesterday at Wesley Church yesterday for Coro Chamber Music’s concert, “This American Life,” adding, “but there is so much good repertoire.”

Bowman confided out loud that there was also some rubbish, but that was not on show in a sophisticated concert that confirms Coro’s place as one of Canberra’s leading choral ensembles.

This was not an American songbook in the “great hits of…” tradition, but rather a refined selection of choral masterworks from the 20th century by Aaron Copeland, Samuel Barber, Elliot Carter and the relatively unknown Cecil Effinger, whose evocative “Four Pastorales for oboe and chorus” proved the most pleasant surprise of the afternoon.

To many in the audience, much of the repertoire was unknown.

Because of the sensitive planning of this concert, one might call it curating, there was no sense of a ‘catalogue’ of masterworks, but rather a perfectly balanced development of the theme of praise, even secular praise, as in Samuel Barber’s first “Reincarnation”- “Mary Hynes”.

Bowman mused about how little-known Effinger’s works were, but as the program unfolded (the works were interleaved with those of other composers during the afternoon) one could reflect that this Colorado composer and his lyricist, Denver poet Thomas Hornsby Ferril, were traversing the same territory as many Australian composers, especially in his evocation of the heat and shadows of the prairie at noon. Effinger, an oboist himself, provided the perfect opportunity for Jessica Donohue’s oboe performance, seamlessly weaving in and out of the choral elements in the Pastorales.

Coro is as comfortable with the solemnity of Elliot Carter’s “Heart not so heavy as mine” as with the sweetness of the final chosen work, Barber’s, “Sure on this shining night.”

They were equally at ease singing in unison or handling complex harmonies in the most powerful performance of the afternoon, “Aaron Copland’s “In the beginning.” It is nothing short of amazing that this work is not part of the standard repertoire of Australian choirs, so commanding is this choral retelling of the creation story from the book of Genesis, narrated yesterday with considerable power by mezzo-soprano Maartje Sevenster.

Bowman conducted Coro with a subtlety that saw nothing out of balance and Wesley Church, though sultry, proved acoustically well-suited to this unusual performance by a choir that has signalled it will not take the easy way out.