^{FIRST PUBLISHED 23 MAY 2025}

This album by Fretwork pairs some of the greatest music for viol consort by Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) with the first recording of Nico Muhly's My Days. Written in 2012 for Fretwork and The Hilliard Ensemble and commissioned by Wigmore Hall, My Days sets the same text as Gibbons' anthem ‘Behold, thou hast made my days’, and frames this with a setting of the autopsy report on Gibbons’ death on 5 June 1625. An autopsy report was ordered as Gibbons was accompanying King Charles on a trip to Canterbury to greet the King's new wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, and there were fears that Gibbons may have succumbed to the plague. Upon opening his skull, however, they saw that he had suffered a brain haemorrhage.

The album is released in the 400th anniversary year of Gibbon's death.

"Orlando Gibbons was a genius. We can probably all agree that this term is massively anachronistic. However, justified, I think, in order to establish his music on the same elevated niveau as Purcell, Beethoven or Schubert. While it is difficult to make such analogies when his music is still relatively rarely performed by comparison with these more illustrious names, Gibbons’ fecundity of imagination, his masterly handling of his material, his emotional depth and maturity, the exquisite turns of phrase, his harmonic assurance, his contrapuntal ease and mastery - all of these put him in the first rank of composers" - Richard Boothby

'"'My Days' is a ritualised memory piece about Orlando Gibbons written for two ensembles whose recordings informed so much of my musical development. I feel like I spend half of my life trying to trick string players to play like Fretwork, and vocalists to sing like the Hilliard Ensemble, so it was with enormous pleasure that I composed this piece." - Nico Muhly

The album is available to purchase at Signum Records.