Tongues of Fire:

The works of African-American composer Florence Price (1887-1953) have only lately been receiving the attention they are due, and her harmonically lush Mass in F for chorus and organ will be juxtaposed against another mass setting by a modern female composer, the “Tongues of Fire” Mass by Cecilia McDowall (b. 1951). McDowall was honored in 2021 by receiving the new carol commission from the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge for their annual Lessons & Carols Service, broadcast to millions on Christmas Eve, and she thus entered the history books as a choral composer of the first rank.