John Dowland
Come again, sweet love doth now invite
Lachrimae antiquae
The King of Denmark’s Galliard
Can she excuse my wrongs?
Sorrow, stay, lend true repentant tears
The Earl of Essex Galliard
Flow, my tears
The Frog Galliard
Now, O now, I needs must part
Henry Purcell
from The Fairy Queen – If love’s a sweet passion
Strike the viol
from The Fairy Queen – Chaconne: Dance for Chinese Man and Woman
An Evening Hymn
Encores
Thomas Dunford/Doug Balliett
Trust The Wind
Sometimes
Paul McCartney
Hey Jude
Laurence Kilsby tenor
Jupiter Ensemble
Thomas Dunford director/lute
Reviewed by: Nick Breckenfield
Reviewed: 21 July, 2026
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
Another Proms season, another debut from a French-based group. Just like last year’s opening weekend morning debut from Théotime Langlois de Swarte and his Le Consort this first-week visitor was the Jupiter Ensemble, founded in 2018 by lutenist (and, as we were to find out, composer) Thomas Dunford.
Billed as ‘Late Night Baroque’ it was in essence a 400th anniversary commemoration of John Dowland, who died in 1626, and of another composer that could boast the title of Orpheus Britannicus, Henry Purcell, born just under a century after Dowland, but already dead by 1695. As Dunford explained he had constructed a programme which referenced both composers’ take on love and melancholy, and the separate sequences, mostly seamless, were beautiful if bittersweet reflections on the human condition. From my mid-way back in the hall, the sound was delicate and distanced, though lines were clean and clear, with Laurence Kilsby’s effortless tenor and great diction, so even the programme’s missing three central verses of the opening number wasn’t a problem.
The small ensemble of eight players (including Dunford) ensured an intimacy that perhaps belies the size of the hall and acted like a time-machine winding the clock back first 400 years and more, then 300 years. The addition to the ensemble of Keyvan Chemirani’s hand-held and patted drum, offered a subtle rhythmic base to all the works, perhaps surprising from our normal ideas of music from those periods, but it was very effective. Just because it’s not necessarily written in the sources, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The thin line between the lovelorn and the melancholy was enhanced.
As Dunford foreshadowed in his interview in the programme, there was time for something more modern – two of his own songs with bassists Doug Balliet, in which we were encouraged to join Also joining the strings and harpsichord on stage was a kit drummer, a saxophonist and a trumpeter. I have to admit that my heart sank: Dowland and Purcell was quite enough for me, and neither Trust The Wind nor Sometimes increased the pleasure offered by the earlier works. The only advantage of Hey Jude to which we were expected to sing the words, was that the players peeled off and left the stage, as many of the audience had already started leaving the hall.