AS Bedale continued to celebrate 750 years of its market charter, the five voices of Quintessential, the semi-professional group from Harrogate, contributed a programme of music spanning the same 750 years.

Last Friday's concert ranged from the old English round, Sumer is icumen in, written just before Bedale was awarded its market charter in 1251, to the 20th century music of Freddy Mercury and Queen.

It was a remarkable performance of tuneful, intelligent and disciplined singing from the two women and three men. Individually they have good voices but together they blend so well that somehow the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

In the opening group of Renaissance madrigals, they sang as one with clear diction and fine phrasing. Excelling particularly in Morley's Sing we and chant it and Tomkins Too much I once lamented.

The medieval group included an unaccompanied solo written by Guillaume de Machaut, a piece of haunting charm beautifully sung by the group's mezzo-soprano.

Contrasting sharply with the bare lines of these were the richer textures of the part songs that followed, especially Vaughan Williams' Linden Lea and the complex harmonies and dissonances of Tchaikovsky's Crown of Roses.

In the second half, folk song arrangements presented formidable key changes that the group negotiated with effortless ease.

They ended with a dash of humour - a satire of public school life - and a display of even greater versatility, singing the instrument parts themselves in a Creole blues number, imitating trumpets, clarinets, double bass, the lot.

And how the audience of about 100 loved it. For some, their encore, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, arranged by Gareth Reaks was as good as it gets. - R R