After working with famed composer Ēriks Ešenvalds and performing six concerts in France during Knox's spring break, the Knox College Choir will give its Home Tour Concert at 7:30 p.m., March 31, in Knox College's Kresge Hall.

Directed by Laura Lane, professor of music, the concert features a new work, "Leaves," commissioned by the Choir from Ešenvalds, one of today's best-known choral composers. Ešenvalds worked with the Knox choir in February and gave a free lecture on campus.

The Choir's tour of France included concerts from March 15 through March 22 in Cannes, Nice, Menton Aix en Provence, Avignon, and Marseilles. The choir also held two exchanges with French high school students.

The tour program featured three selections in French and one in Haitian Creole.

"I don't think audiences were expecting any French at all, so they were pleasantly surprised," Lane said. "The text to 'Le Pont Mirabeau' is a famous poem by the French poet Apolinaire, which they all knew. Most of them had heard, and many of them had actually sung, another selection, Debussy's 'Yvers vous n'estes qu'un villain.' We got several standing ovations at every concert."

The Knox College Choir has toured throughout the United States during the College's annual Spring Break, and embarks on a European tour every four years.