Fretwork (music group)

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Fretwork
Photo by Edward Webb
Background information
Origin	London, England
Genre(s)	Early music, Renaissance music, Contemporary music
Years active	1986-present
Label(s)	Virgin Classics, Harmonia Mundi
Members
Richard Boothby Richard Campbell Wendy Gillespie Asako Morikawa Richard Tunnicliffe Susanna Pell

Fretwork is a consort of viols based in England, United Kingdom. Formed in 1986, the group consists of six players. Its repertoire consists primarily of music of the Renaissance period, in particular that of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, arrangements of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and contemporary music written for them.

The group has toured all over the world, with tours of Japan & USA, and three visits to Russia, the first when it was still the Soviet Union in 1989. They initiated a series of courses for voices and viols on the Greek island of Evvia with Michael Chance, and have also been invited twice to teach on the annual Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

In addition to its performances of early music, Fretwork has been active in commissioning new works for viol consort. Its 1997 recording Sit Fast includes new works by such composers as Gavin Bryars, Tan Dun, and Elvis Costello. It has also commissioned music from Sir John Tavener, Alexander Goehr, George Benjamin, Duncan Druce, Fabrice Fitch, Gavin Bryars, Barry Guy, Poul Ruders, Simon Bainbridge, Ivan Moody, John Woolrich, Thea Musgrave, Peter Sculthorpe, Sally Beamish, Andrew Keeling and Orlando Gough.

Fretwork has recorded a series of discs for Virgin Classics and currently records for Harmonia Mundi USA. Recent discs include 'Alio Modo' (arrangements of keyboard music by Bach), Chansons by Alexander Agricola and Fabrice Fitch and a disc of consort songs with Emma Kirkby.

Its most recent disc is 'Birds on Fire: Jewish Music for Viols' which presents some of the music composed by Italian-Jewish composers from the Bassano & Lupo families, who came to England to work at the court of Henry VIII in 1540. It also includes music by Salamone Rossi and Leonora Duarte. Finally it includes the first recording of 'Birds on Fire' itself, a three-part piece by Orlando Gough written for Fretwork in 2001. This work is based on the novel by Aaron Appelfeld "Badenheim 1939", telling the story of a group of Jews who holiday in a resort near Vienna in the spring of 1939. The town gradually becomes a ghetto, and the band of musicians gradually rediscover their Jewish roots to break out from the Vienese schmalz to play klezmer tunes.

Fretwork was recently featured on the soundtracks of two Jim Jarmusch movies, Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) and Broken Flowers (2005). Other filmtracks include The Da Vinci Code, Kingdom of Heaven, The Crucible, La Fille d'Artagnant and many others. It has also recorded for Robbie Williams (Supreme) and Loreena McKennitt (for the album An Ancient Muse).