by Anne E. Johnson
Published January 4, 2026
There I Long to Be. Ensemble Galilei. Sono Luminus (SLE-70042). Total Time: 1h 51
As the connection between traditional musics and early music is increasingly recognized, the members of New York’s Ensemble Galilei must be watching with some puzzlement. Their new double album, There I Long to Be, celebrates the group’s 35th anniversary, and all that time they’ve combined various types of old music — and old-inspired new music — as a matter of course.
The ensemble was founded in 1990 by viola da gamba player Carolyn Surrick, who has a long history of considering many things at once in her musical projects. In 2003, for example, she and Galilei created A Universe of Dreams, a multimedia concert experience involving narration to images from the Hubble Telescope. By comparison, putting together Dowland and folk tunes is pretty tame stuff.
Isaac Alderson is one of the New York Irish music scene’s best uilleann pipers (these are bagpipes filled by elbow-squeezed bellows rather than being blown into by mouth). His membership in Galilei should obliterate any fear that the ensemble is merely dabbling in the Celtic tradition. They’ve brought in some fine fiddlers for this album, too: another trad-scene veteran, Hanneke Cassel (a former Galileian herself) and Twin Cities-based Tim Langen.
Surrick on gamba and Alderson on Irish flute open the album with a duet of the waltz-like “Planxty Hewlet” by Ireland’s most famous composer, Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738). Each time through, the tune finds a delightful new instrumentation, with Alderson switching to his pipes. It’s followed by a slip jig (a tune type in 9/8 time) called “The Dusty Miller” that introduces the deeply resonant sound of the bodhrán (pronounced “BOW-rahn”), an Irish drum held vertically on the knee. The last tune in the set is composed by Alderson and Jesse Langen, the new composition serving as a reminder that the tradition continues.
But this is an Ensemble Galilei album, so you can’t predict what’s around the next corner. Those rousing opening tunes are followed by the plaintive “Come Away, Death,” sung by tenor James Oxley, who wrote the music to words by Shakespeare. It’s rather in the style of John Dowland, so they brought in one of the great lutesong experts to accompany him: Ronn McFarland. There’s actual Dowland, too (“Flow my teares”), and his contemporary, John Bennet (“Venus Birds”), which features a haunting Irish flute obbligato.
Just when you think you have a handle on the offerings — crackling Irish tunes and English lutesong — along comes a surprise from someplace else. Cassel plays “Gjendine’s Bådlåt,” a Norwegian lulluby, against a gamba drone, followed by Surrick’s own neo-medieval “Gjendine’s Waltz.” There are pieces from Scotland, Serbia, Sweden, France, Italy, France. Every traditional tune is imaginatively arranged (Alderson solos on saxophone for the Irish air “Cape Clear”) and played with energy, precision, and infectious enthusiasm. Every composed work is rendered with fine technique and thoughtful phrasing. These 34 tracks provide a mountain of evidence for why Ensemble Galilei has flourished for 35 years.
In an essay about the making of the album, Surrick reveals that she was being treated for cancer throughout that creative period. Here’s wishing her good health, and wishing the group many more years and many more albums. While we wait, there are plenty of old Galilei recordings to discover. Among the best are The Mystic and the Muse: Celebrating 600 Years of Women in Music (Dorian, 1997); From the Isles to the Courts (Telarc, 2001); and the self-released From the Edge of the World (2007), created as part of a global project with National Geographic.
Anne E. Johnson is EMA Books Editor and frequent contributor to Classical Voice North America. She teaches music theory, ear training, and composition geared toward Irish trad musicians at the Irish Arts Center in New York and on her website, IrishMusicTeacher.com. For EMA, she recently wrote about Jody Miller, the Pied Piper of the Southeast.
