Gibbons, O: Fantasia

Theatre of Voices and Fretwork are heard in a selection of the Cries of London, in which music for viol consort is overlaid - sometimes comically, sometimes poignantly - with the raucous voices of 16th-century London's street-vendors, mendicants, tradesmen and river-taxis.

The accomplishments of the virginalists, that school of English keyboard composers who flourished in the late Tudor and early Stuart eras, are documented in even the most succinct music history books. This recording proposes an overview of non-liturgical English keyboard music from about 1525 to 1650, written for an instrument then called the virginals. Because of its slower mechanism and rustic timbre, the "virginals" is used here for playing the earlier repertoire and for variations on folk tunes, whereas the harpsichord is reserved for the more extended virtuoso pieces. Harpsichordist and scholar Rachelle Taylor has given concerts and lectures in Canada, Europe, the United States, and Taiwan, and has been featured in broadcast concerts on the French and English services of the CBC.