HOW does director Harry Christophers choose a touring programme for his choir, The Sixteen, who play the 2016 York Early Music Festival on Saturday?

"It's always difficult because each year I have to devise something that's different from the previous year but there always more requirements than just doing that," he says. "Not just something that will sustain the choir for 30 performances and also maintain our audiences' interest, but it also has to be something that's suitable for a CD recording and it has to have an eye-catching title."

This weekend, The Sixteen present The Deer's Cry, Music by Byrd, Tallis and Arvo Part at York Minster, a 7.30pm programme that combines the sacred works of Elizabethan Englishman William Byrd and his teacher, Thomas Tallis, with pieces by the Estonian Arvo Part from more than 400 years later.

"This year I wanted to juxtapose the old and the new, so I started very much with the premise of religious and political instability with the horrors that Byrd had to go through in his lifetime and the political difficulties had to go through, which brought about this wonderful music."

Both composers spent many years facing adversity and persecution, seeking solace through their sacred music,"though Part didn't set out deliberately to write for the liturgy, whereas Byrd did," says Harry.

Saturday's programme in the Minster Nave includes lavish Latin motets by Bryd, Tallis's When Jesus Went and Part's The Deer's Cry and Nunc Dimittis, works that will suit the Minster acoustic, suggests Harry. "We're blessed as York is one of the best cathedrals for music. It's not a challenge to sing in the Nave; it's a delight. All these older cathedrals are built on the same mathematical pattern and clearly designed with music in mind," he says.

"York Minster benefits from a clarity of sound as the singing resonates around the cathedral and a chord stays perfect all the way down the Nave. So the choir just love performing in York; we've been doing it for 16 years and they all say what a privilege it is to sing there."

Harry knows the importance of nurturing audiences, here in York and beyond on The Sixteen's Choral Pilgrimage. "It's easier to draw an audience in a university city like York, but one major thing that has helped us is our Genesis Sixteen programme for young singers, which encourages singing all over the country, so the word has spread about The Sixteen," he says.

"York has a great music tradition at the university, where the department has just enlarged, such as [I Fagiolini director] Robert Hollingworth joining the faculty, and that benefits the festival, while our workshops encourage a younger audience too.

"Doing Facebook and Twitter helps us, and so has the 12-part BBC series we've done, which has set the right tone by not dumbing down but not going over people's heads either. It's brilliant that so many more choirs are being set up."

The Sixteen perform The Deer's Cry, Music by Byrd, Tallis and Arvo Part, York Minster, July 9, 7.30pm, as part of their 2016 Choral Pilgrimage. Box office: 01904 658338 or at ncem.co.ukyemf/yemf