Sept. 26: Ensemble Galilei Releases Special 2-CD Album There I Long to Be on Sono Luminus – Featuring Early, Traditional, and Original Music

Ensemble Galilei Releases There I Long to Be
New Album on Sono Luminus

Special 2-CD Set Celebrating Ensemble’s 35th Anniversary

Featuring Early and Traditional Music by Turlough O'Carolan, John Dowland, Pieter de Vois, and more and original music by Isaac Alderson, Jesse Langen, James Oxley and Carolyn Surrick

Worldwide Release: September 26, 2025
Pre-Order Available Now

Release Concerts in Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington, DC

“a genuine love for the music they're playing, an uplifting spirit in their performances, and not-a-little fond sentimentality toward their work” – Classical Candor

Downloads and CDs available to press on request

www.EGMusic.com | SonoLuminus.com

Iconic musician collective Ensemble Galilei announces its new album There I Long to Be, which will be released September 26, 2025 on Sono Luminus. This special 2-CD release coincides with Ensemble Galilei’s 35th anniversary and marks the group’s fourth recording with the GRAMMY®-winning label, following 2015’s From Whence We Came.

Ensemble Galilei is a small ensemble specializing in a wide range of music for their particular instrumentation, and includes Isaac Alderson (uilleann pipes, Irish flute, whistles, tenor saxophone), Jesse Langen (guitar), Kathryn Montoya (recorders, whistle, shawm), Jackie Moran (banjo, bodhrán, egg shaker; and founder Carolyn Surrick (viola da gamba). The group performs Renaissance and Baroque, Ancient and recent Celtic (including Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Galician music), and Irish music, including some works especially written for them. The ensemble is named after Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 1520-1592), a pioneer in the Greek-inspired movement that created “opera in musica.” He is credited as both simplifying and bringing passion back into music, and was also a leading theoretician of his time. (His son, Galileo Galilei, was the great astronomer.)

Featuring 47 tunes across 34 tracks on two discs, There I Long to Be contains an abundance of jigs, reels, traditional tunes, and early music, as well as works by members of the Ensemble. In addition to the five regular Ensemble members, this recording also features Hanneke Cassel (fiddle, and Ensemble Galilei emeritus member), Tim Langen (fiddle), Ronn McFarlane (lute), and James Oxley (tenor).

The project began as two albums, on parallel paths. One was new for Ensemble Galilei – an early music, classical album. The other was in line with the approach the Ensemble had embraced in its previous recordings. As Surrick put it, “For the first time, we were going to record an early music album in a conventional classical music style. Ensemble Galilei had always been known as a crossover group, meaning that while it was true that we performed early music, traditional music was always right around the corner. We never sought to achieve a level of historical performance practice that might engage early music audiences, until now.”

Recorded over the course of two years, the music on There I Long to Be encompasses a wide range of musical styles, cultures, and time periods – a combination of the musicians’ individual interests and the group’s focus. What unites it is an artistic vision that is inspired and undeterred, and unique to Ensemble Galilei. Sono Luminus CEO Collin Rae recognized this, and suggested embracing a 2-CD format to showcase the Ensemble’s full scope.

The new album adds to Ensemble Galilei’s extensive discography, which has attracted millions of streams on Spotify. Surrick writes, “I looked at our Spotify page for the first time and saw that we had millions of streams. Our big cities were Paris, Seattle, and London, and our demographic was predominantly people in their late teens, twenties, and early thirties, not our usual concert audience – they were listening and sharing with friends. This was happening all over the world.”

This discovery illustrated Ensemble Gailei’s mission of deeply connecting with humanity through music. As Surrick summarizes in this album’s liner notes, “In the end, if the musicians have brought their hearts, souls, and years of mastery, if the recording team has entered into the space with wisdom, tools, patience and good will, if LIndsey Nelson, our executive producer, is saying, ‘Sure, let’s book one more session to make this the very best it can possibly be’ then the opportunity exists for the listener to hear it all — the breath, the intention, the ensemble, the soloist, the fingers on the strings, the air as it comes out of the recorder, the hands on the regulators of the uilleann pipes, the tipper as it touches the head of the bodhran, the rosin on the fiddle’s bow, and feathered end of the note on a viola da gamba. It is all there.”

There I Long to Be is Ensemble Galilei’s sixteenth recording, adding to the group’s exceptional discography, which includes Music in the Great Hall (1992, Maggie’s Music); Ancient Noels (1993, Maggie’s Music); Following the Moon (1995, Dorian Discovery); The Mystic and the Muse (1997, Dorian/NPR Classics); Come, Gentle Night (2000, Telarc); From the Isles to the Courts (2001, Telarc); A Winter’s Night (2002, Maggie’s Music); Alta (2005, EG Records); From the Edge of the World (2007, EG Records); Notes from Across the Sea (2009, self-release); A Change of Worlds (2012, Sono Luminus); Surrounded by Angels (2013, Sono Luminus); From Whence We Came (2015, Sono Luminus); Flowers of the Forest (2018, Flowerpot Productions); A Solstice Gathering (2020, Flowerpot Productions).

Ensemble Galilei: There I Long to Be
Release Date: September 26, 2025 | Sono Luminus

Disc 1: [1-18]

[1] Planxty Hewlett - Turlough O’Carolan [6:06]
The Dusty Miller - Traditional Irish Slip Jig
The Last Minute - Isaac Alderson & Jesse Langen
[2] Come Away, Death - Tune: James Oxley [2:36]
Lyrics: Wm. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
[3] Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill - Turlough O’Carolan [4:34]
Allan Water - Playford Collection of 1700
Licke-potje - anon. with divisions by Kathryn Montoya
[4] Io son un Pellegrino - Giovanni da Firenze [1:45]
Serbian Wedding Dance - Traditional Serbian
[5] The Boys of Barr na Sraide - Sigerson Clifford [3:54]
[6] Fantasia no.3 - Pieter de Vois [1:32]
[7] Flow my teares - John Dowland [4:07]
[8] Life - Tobias Hume [2:25]
[9] Tweede Stuck - Christiaen Herwich [3:15]
[10] Gallarde Faraboscho - anon. [1:35]
[11] Bruach Na Carraige Báine - Traditional Irish [2:53]
[12] Venus Birds - John Bennet [3:17]
[13] Gjendine’s Bådlåt - Traditional Norwegian Lullaby [5:29]
Gjendine’s Waltz - Carolyn Surrick
[14] Cape Clear - Traditional Irish Air [4:44]
[15] Fantasia no. 2 - Pieter de Vois [1:09]
[16] Loftus Jones - Turlough O’Carolan [2:47]
[17] When that I was a Little Tiny Boy - Tune: The Gypsy Princess [2:27]
Lyrics: Wm. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
[18] Waltz no.1 - Isaac Alderson [2:41]

[Disc 1 Runtime: 58:06]

Disc 2: [19-34]

[19] Barn Dance no.1 - Isaac Alderson [3:52]
[20] Go Cristall teares - John Dowland [2:53]
[21] Frere Frapar - anon. [3:49]
Zesde Petit Brande - anon.
La Perichone - anon.
[22] Love is the Cause of My Mourning from A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes - Miss Noble Turlough O’Carolan [4:22]
[23] His Golden Lockes - John Dowland [3:30]
[24] Sliabh Geal gCua - Slow Air, c. Pádraig Ó Miléadha [6:26]
Aggie Whyte’s - Traditional Irish Reel
The Old Blackthorn Stick - Traditional Irish Reel
[25] As I Roved Out - Traditional Irish [3:44]
[26] The Leaving of St. Kilda - Willie Ross [3:43]
[27] Au joly bois - Claudin de Sermisy [1:37]
[28] Suzanna Galliard - John Dowland [1:51]
[29] Vierde Carileen - Cornelis Kist, divisions, Jacob Van Eyck [1:59]
[30] Onques Amour - Thomas Crecquillon [3:28]
divisions by Giovanni Bassano
[31] Jesus in Thy Dying Woes - Swedish Litany [1:29]
[32] Beware Fair Maids - William Corkine [2:24]
[33] Old Simon the King - from The Division Flute [2:46]
[34] Fair Maid of Barra - Traditional Scottish Pipe Tune [4:35]
The Sporting Pitchfork - Traditional Irish Jig
Scattery Island - Traditional Irish Slide

[Disc 2 Runtime: 53:14]
[Total Time: 1:51:20]

Lindsey R. Nelson, Executive Producer
Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Robert Friedrich, Five/Four Productions, LLC®
Collin J. Rae, Executive Producer
Produced by Dan Merceruio
Joshua Frey, Layout
Carolyn Surrick, Liner Notes
Photography: Bernard McWilliams
Cover Art: Amy Fenton-Shine

About Ensemble Galilei: The principal is simple and exquisite: put five, brilliant and collaborative musicians in a room, empower them equally, and then set them free. And when they choose a piece of music, it is not the tune’s provenance that matters, not its musicological era, nor its country of origin. It is the story being told, leading to the journey that the musicians embark upon, together.

Predictably, Scottish fiddlers will bring Scottish music. Irish pipers may bring slow airs, jigs and reels. Early music wind players might bring 17th century variations. But then, the harper brings a Polska from Sweden. The gamba player brings a drone that apparently has its origins at the center of the earth, and after 35 years of being an instrumental ensemble, someone starts to sing. Go figure.

A new melody shows up, written in grief. Another, written in love. The words of Frederick Douglass are set to a tune by Turlough O’Carolan, a poem by Jim Harrison, set to a hymn from Southern Harmony. The connective tissue is not a genre, it is a passion. Theirs is commitment to remarkable music making, and indeed, this is where Ensemble Galilei dwells, sharing the journey with audiences, decade after decade.