Dowland’s Foundry: UNQUIET THOUGHTS I

John Dowland The First Book of Songs (1597)

Founded in 2023 around Emma Kirkby’s kitchen table, Dowland’s Foundry return John Dowland’s lute songs to the intimate, domestic world for which they were written. The First Book of Songs was a sensation in its day, and in Dowland’s anniversary year this programme places it centre stage. The songs unfold like a conversation, voices looping, interrupting and rejoining, always in close dialogue with the lute. Four leading singers are joined by Sam Brown, dubbed the ‘Eric Clapton of the lute’, in music by turns restless, dark and tender.

‘Dowland’s Foundry encapsulate what Dowland called the consent of speaking harmony’ Dame Emma Kirkby