The Bermuda Festival 2010 ended on a high note with a two-night run for international award-winning a cappella octet, Voces 8. Extremely versatile as well as talented, the group has a repertoire ranging from Renaissance polyphony to scat and pop.

With a programme billed 'From Gibbons to Gershwin', both halves of the evening included "a varied collection of repertoire that charts a musical journey spanning 500 years and three continents".

Though I personally would have preferred more Renaissance selections, the programme was balanced with enough contemporary crowd-pleasers to appeal to the broadest range of concert-goers.

This relatively young group take their music very seriously, but with a generous dose of humour, which made their performance not only technically extraordinary but also hugely entertaining.

The evening began with selections from the English Renaissance composers Orlando Gibbons and William Byrd; Byrd's 'Vigilante' incorporated particularly complex polyphony that the group performed exquisitely. For the three 20th century pieces – Gershwin 'I Got Rhythm', 'Fever' by Otis Blackwell and 'Dream a Little Dream' by Andres and Schwardt – the ensemble provided lead and back-up.

In true scat style, it also provided the instrumentation which included trumpet, trombone, bass and brushes on a snare drum – an astonishing replication of mechanical sound. The first half concluded with Bach's 'Singet dem Herrn', a classic choral motet, modestly introduced as "a quite substantial piece", which the group performed with an impeccable sense of timing.

The second half of the evening began with Al Jolson's 'Me and My Shadow', Kurt Weill's 'Mack the Knife' and a traditional spiritual, 'Steal Away', before returning once more to the Renaissance.

Montiverdi's 'Cantate Domino' with its striking antiphonies for two choirs was particularly appealing.

A song by French composer Pierre Passereau featuring peasant women and chickens was an entertaining side trip before a return to the 20th century with The Average White Band's 'Cloudy', 'Golden Eye' by Bono and the Edge and 'Nobody Does It Better' by Hamlisch and Bayer-Sager.

The programme concluded with Gershwin's 'Slap that Bass', but the audience demanded more and ensemble obliged with a delightfully witty encore, "an opera medley featuring several composers – all dead".

There were only eight voices, but what voices! The harmonies were pure, with tonal clarity and expressive phrasing. The range of their repertoire demonstrated just how versatile they are; and all genres, irrespective of the complexity of the original scores, were given the same respect. Whether they were signing a madrigal or a pop song, the delivery was technically flawless and had the same beauty of vocal colour.

One can capture the quality of their voices in a recording, but what made it truly worth braving the cold and rain was their stage presence. Each piece was introduced with an anecdote that created a personal link with the music. Their performance had a dramatic quality, facial expression, lighting and movement enhanced the programme, often in an amusing manner. 'Slap that Bass' was particularly entertaining.

It was indeed, altogether an extremely enjoyable evening.