BOLTON Choral Union starts its new season of concerts on a high note -- with a work generally regarded as JS Bach's choral masterpiece.

The Mass in B Minor will be performed at the Victoria Hall on Saturday, November 24, 7.30pm.

There will be a large choir of around 90 voices, a professional orchestra -- the Camerata Concert Orchestra -- and soloists from the Royal College of music.

One of the soloists is David Bates, widely considered as a world star in the making.

David started his musical career as choral scholar at Salisbury Cathedral. Recent solo engagements include Breckon, the Spitalfields Festival, King's College Chapel in Cambridge, and the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.

He recently sang a recital of sacred and secular works by Henry Purcell accompanied by David Titterington in Switzerland.

Alongside his solo work, David enjoys singing at Westminster Abbey as a deputy lay vicar and also with vocal consorts including the Oxford Camerata, Polyphony, and English Voices.

David will be joined by Paul Thompson, a choral scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in music.

On graduating, he joined the choir of Christ Church, Oxford, with which he made many recordings and broadcasts, and toured Japan, Brazil and the USA.

He joined the postgraduate vocal course of the RAM in 1999. His opera experience includes Mozart, Bastien and Bastienne, Purcell's The Fairy Queen at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Covent Garden and scenes from the Barber of Seville, The Turn of the Screw, and Adriadne auf Naxos.

Recent concert appearances include The Messia, Elijah, Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle, Britten St Nicholas and Evangelist in both Bach Passions.

Final soloist is Asa Danielsson from Stockholm, Sweden. In June 2001 she finished her second year of the diploma course at RAM, London, and is now at the Royal Academy Opera.

Asa won the Inez Kohler Prize awarded by the singing teachers of Sweden in 1997, and the Joel Berglund Award, given by the Royal Opera soloists of Sweden in 1999. She has worked in opera choruses in Sweden and in the summer of 2000 performed in Cosi Fan Tutte in Cambridge and in Bergerac, France.

Future engagements include Elgar's The Kingdom and in the RAO productions the roles of La Contessa in Mozart's Le Nozze de Figaro and Alice Ford in Verdi's Falstaff.

The conductor will be the Choral Union musical director, Michael Greenhalgh, and the organist, Douglas Butters.

Tickets, from £4 to £10, from Booths Music Shop, Churchgate, Bolton, 522908, the Bolton Ticket and Information Centre on 334400, and from 492301.