Concert Program/ Concordia & Elin Manahan Thomas

From the official Program Notes: William Lawes was one of the most powerfully original English composers of the seventeenth century, his music displaying a bold and passionate individuality that matched his cavalier way of life. Far from being among the majority of musicians who at the time of the English Civil War ‘chose rather to fiddle at home, than to goe out, and be knock’d on the head abroad’, he died in battle, fighting for the Royalist cause at the Siege of Chester. Leading English viol consort Concordia performs two of his extraordinary Setts (or Suites) and is joined by rising star Elin Manahan Thomas in show-stopping songs by Lawes and his great successor Henry Purcell. There is also an opportunity to hear a remarkable example of early programme music – John Jenkins’s Newark Siege.