Daniel Asia recently won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for composition, and has been the recipient of many competitive grants and fellowships in music including a Meet The Composer/Reader's Digest Consortium Commission, United Kingdom Fulbright Arts Award Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, four NEA Composers Grants, a M. B. Rockefeller Grant, and many more. Britain's foremost professional chamber choir, the BBC Singers, was founded in 1924. As a vital resource in the BBC's music output, the BBC Singers hold a unique position in British musical life. Performing everything from Byrd and Birtwistle to Tallis and Takemitsu, the versatility of this 24-voice ensemble is second to none.

When an ensemble like the BBC Singers, renowned for its commitment to the music of our time, sets out to record a Christmas CD you can be sure that the repertoire will include material rather different from the usual run of popular standards and arrangements! One star, at last includes eight new carols (six of them specially-commissioned by BBC Radio 3), several premiere recordings, and a selection of music - serious and light-hearted, contemplative and joyful - by some of the leading British, European and North American choral composers of the day. Composers include Martland, Weir, Ades, MacMillan, Tavener, Kornowicz, Rodney Bennet and Harle.

When Sir Michael Tippett first worked with the BBC Singers in 1944, the experience was such that he recalled nearly 50 years later that 'It was to be the first of many such occasions when a composer's dreams were brought to fulfillment.' Tippett's relationship with the BBC Singers went back to almost the beginning of his career, and he often expressed intense admiration for them. His faith is rewarded here. Now under the Conductor Laureate, Stephen Cleobury, the present-day BBC Singers return the compliment with this program of his works for choir, both unaccompanied and with organ. The plaintive high solo of the Nunc Dimittis, floating above strange middle-range harmonies, soars worlds away from cosy Anglican convention. The 'sprung' rhythms of Dance Clarion Air and The Windhover have a muscular freedom unlike anything in contemporary English music. The strangely irregular figures Tipett waves around the tune in Over the Sea to Skye may seem over-ingenious at first, but by the end their quite hypnotic, at the same time challenging the ear to re-examine a very familiar melody.

The world-renowned choral composer and conductor Bob Chilcott leads the BBC Singers, as well as the internationally recognised soloists Simone Rebello and Paul Silverthorne, in these new performances of some of his best and most loved choral works. The choir is renowned as an expert ensemble and here they sing splendidly under Chilcott's direction. The selection of music on this disc has been well made to give a good variety of perspectives on Bob Chilcott's choral output - a resourceful composer and one who writes exceptionally well for voices and he is superbly served here by the virtuosity of the BBC Singers. This is a glorious showcase of one of the finest choral composers at work in Britain today.