and 22 -- St. John's Church.

A pot pourri of songs that ranged from Latin motets to `Roll Out the Barrel' provided an unexpectedly varied programme for the Geoffrey Tankard Choir, making their debut in the Bermuda Festival at St. John's Church over the weekend.

The selected programme, which seemed to be all over the place, probably suffered as a result of conductor Graham Garton's immigration troubles during the summer.

With a fairly late decision to go ahead with the projected Festival concert, important rehearsal time was obviously lost.

In the circumstances, and despite the curious mix of music, the choir managed to achieve a pleasing and cohesive sound.

Originally formed in 1980 in memory of the late Professor Geoffrey Tankard, the Choir, which specialises in a cappella singing, has become a valued charity organisation which has raised considerable sums of money to assist students wishing to pursue further studies in music or the arts.

The choir, commencing with music in sacred vein, opened the programme with the lovely `Alleluia', composed by American Randall Thompson in 1940. With far more women than men, they nevertheless produced a generally balanced sound.

William Byrd was one of England's best known madrigalists and his Ave Verum Corpus is generally recognised as being one of his finest. The Choir gave a sweetly toned rendition of this beautiful Latin work.

There were also two organ solos in the course of the evening, featuring one of Bermuda's most talented musicians, Adrian Ridgeway -- who not only plays organs, but constructs them. A former student of the Royal College of Music, he served for several years as the assistant director of the Arts Educations School at the Barbican and, before returning home in 1985, became a well known performer in some of London's most famous churches.

His first piece was the Prelude and Fugue in B major by Marcel Dupre, one of this century's most noted composers for the organ and a former pupil of the famed Widor.

This is a work of dramatically rich colours, intertwined with moments of mellow reflection, a quality that Mr. Ridgeway captured in an impressive display of technical virtuosity.

The second piece was `Six Sensations', by Graham Garton, and consisting of a suite of six short impressionist-style, episodic and, one presumes, autobiographical vignettes, such as sparrows hopping about, a variation on the tune of Ye Holy Angels Bright, fragments of choirboy chants and so on.

The vocal focus of the concert then turned to secular songs with Kodaly's attractive Hungarian folk songs, Matra Pictures. Perhaps not as well rehearsed as the preceding sacred pieces, they were, however, brightly and, when the occasion called, wittily sung -- as in the rhythmic `Stealing Chickens'. Peter Nash was the soloist in Summer Time.

Then it was on to a selection of Spirituals and including such favourites as `Deep River', Sir Malcolm Sargent's arrangment of `Little David, Play on you' Harp', `Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' and a gimmicky version of `Dry Bones' where choir members provided the body-map percussion effects (a song, incidentally, that took on a new lease of life with the British TV cult hit, The Singing Detective).

Audience participation took on a quite new meaning when their contribution to `Down by the Riverside' required a singing lesson before it was let loose to provide the tune to the choir's descant.

Olde English costumes (white mob caps for the ladies) provided a change of pace as the choir trooped through the church for the second half, which was devoted to madrigals and what was referred to, somewhat coyly as `secular songs' but which turned out to be mainly pub songs. The choir gave a wonderfully cheerful account of `Sumer is icumen in', the lovely spring song believed to date back to the early 13th century, and almost certainly, one of England's earliest -- if not the earliest -- extant round song.

The exquisitely sung set of early 17th century madrigals which followed belong to that golden Shakespearean age, and including such illustrious composers of that time as Orlando Gibbons (`The Silver Swan'), John Bennet's `All creatures now are merry minded', Thomas Bateson's `Camilla fair tripped o'er the plain' and, perhaps, the loveliest of all, `My bonny lass she smileth' by Thomas Morley.

Dickensian costumes were donned for the finale of the concert which was given over strictly to fun, with a couple of lullabies, `Sweet and Low' and the old plantation song, `Curly Headed Babby'. Peter Nash took on the role of an Italian tenor in a piece called, I believe, `Vento' (each song in this section was announced by Mr. Garton). The show ended with popular Cockney songs along the lines of `There was I, waiting at the church' (with an unbelievably gauche repeat in Bermewjanese), `The Old Bull and Bush' and (one can't help wondering what Professor Tankard would have made of all this), `Roll out the Barrel' -- and a good time was had by all.

PATRICIA CALNAN