WE are about to experience one of the world’s greatest choirs as Musica Viva brings the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge to Llewellyn Hall.

Led by eminent choral conductor, Stephen Layton, also artistic director of the City of London Sinfonia, who has been at the helm for 10 years, this mixed choir is made up of 30 fresh, young voices of male and female undergraduates of the college.

But here’s the unusual thing – they are all chosen for their academic qualities.

“Although they must have good voices, they are chosen for their academic talents, no matter what discipline – arts, science or economics,” says Layton.

“I see myself as nurturing students to be part of a whole.”

It’s a very old choir. Trinity College was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 and, Layton says: “There’s been a choir since that time. Originally it was made up of men and little boys like King’s College choir, but they’re all adults now and in the late ’70s and ’80s women were welcomed. Trinity led with this.”

He says the high point of their performance will be one of the 20th century’s most beautiful choral works, “The 1922 Mass for Unaccompanied Double Choir” by Frank Martin. It took the composer 40 years to allow it to be heard, but it has never left the spotlight since.

The program also includes Renaissance works by Byrd and Tallis, through Purcell, Elgar and Herbert Howells, then contemporary works by Arvo Pärt, Ešenvalds and Rautavaara.

Layton says the program aims “to confuse the boundaries between them… that is why we begin with the music of Pärt, he’s a very interesting figure whose approach combines elements of old and new.”

Layton makes good his aim, with a strong emphasis on new music. Two new works have been especially commissioned for this tour, “The Wings of the Wind” by the choir’s organ scholar, Owain Park, and “Hymn of Ancient Lands” by the Australian composer Joe Twist, commissioned for Musica Viva by Mary and Paul Pollard.

“We’re all in a global village,” Layton says.

“I listen when I travel to places like the Baltic or Poland, I hear their music, I take it back. I see us as always reinventing.”

Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Llewellyn Hall, 7pm, August 4, bookings to musicaviva.com.au/trinity