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Amidst the Shades

2/6/2026, 23 Tracks, 1:18:26

Featuring

  • Ruby Hughes
  • Jonas Nordberg
  • Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann
  • John Dowland
  • Robert Johnson
  • Anthony Holborne
  • John Danyel
  • Tobias Hume
  • Henry Purcell
  • Benjamin Britten
  • Errollyn Wallen
  • Deborah Pritchard
  • Cheryl Frances-Hoad

Did you know?

1/7

Album & Artwork

The album's program was inspired by the deep connection and love of Elizabethan music shared by the performers, especially the contemplative and melancholic songs of John Dowland.

Source: Booklet

Interpretation

The performers, Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, and Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann, find the sonic combination of lute, voice, and gamba particularly inspiring and enjoy experimenting with color and nuance through improvisation.

Source: Booklet

Cultural Impact

Robert Johnson's settings of Ariel's songs from The Tempest are among the only surviving Shakespeare settings known to have been authorized and likely heard by Shakespeare himself.

Source: Booklet

Composer's Artistic Vision

Benjamin Britten, a 20th-century English composer, turned to 16th and 17th-century English composers like John Dowland to reawaken a national musical muse, finding in Dowland an 'introspective melancholy'.

Source: Booklet

Composition History

The album includes newly commissioned works by Errollyn Wallen and Deborah Pritchard, using texts by William Shakespeare, and an arrangement of a work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Source: Booklet

Instruments

Jonas Nordberg plays a 10-course lute (2015) after M. Tieffenbrucker and a 14-course archlute (2013) after M. Harton, while Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann plays a Renaissance gamba (2023) by Floris-Jan van der Voort.

Source: Booklet

Composition History

Robert Johnson, a lutenist and composer for the King's Men between 1610 and 1617, composed original music for Shakespeare's play The Tempest, including settings of Ariel's songs.

Source: Booklet

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