Gail Gillispie is one of the pioneers of Chicago’s burgeoning Early Music scene. She founded the Renaissance vocal ensemble The Scholars of Cambrai and has been a member of the Venere Lute Quartet, one of the nations few professional lute ensembles. She has also performed with the Hueglas Ensemble, American Medieval Players, and the Newberry Consort. In her first solo recording, Gillispie shares her passion for and research in The Marsh Lute Book, a major English manuscript of Renaissance lute music complied around 1595 and named for Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, who acquired it. The manuscript contains over 160 pieces of music by prominent composers of the era as well as many anonymous works. “Imagine fining such a collection, full of intriguing objects and specimens, many of them apparently unique – but mostly unlabeled, without provenance, unorganized, and in some cases damaged,” writes Gillispie in the program notes. “Translate this image into a musical context, and you have a reasonable description of the Marsh lute book.”