John Jenkins was the leading English composer of instrumental music during the mid-17th century. He performed at the Stuart court and spent much of his later years working for Royalist families in Norfolk. Much loved for its tuneful grace, his music was widely copied and performed by those who chose to ‘fidle at home’ rather than be harmed during the Civil Wars. We perform Jenkins’ delightful ayres, pavans and fantasias for viols, interspersed with pieces by Tallis, Parsons and Byrd, the Elizabethan composers who established the fantasia style, dances and fantasias by his more extravert contemporary William Lawes, and by the extraordinary ‘Fantazia upon One Note’ by his successor Henry Purcell.

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