Led by gambist/conductor Robin Pharo, the French period instrument Ensemble Près de votre oreille (Close to your ear) makes its debut on the Harmonia Mundi label with a program of sacred vocal work and viol consorts with harp by William Lawes. The brilliant heir to William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, Lawes wrote contrapuntal 5- and 6-part works of immense complexity aimed at more experienced musicians and taking the intimate genre of the viol consort to new heights. In his program note, Pharo says “the album, which borrows its title from a psalm attributed to King David (a musician and harpist himself ), forms a musical portrayal of one of the most important of 17th-century English composers, the beauty of whose music should be lastingly recalled – ‘from generation unto generation.’”