Julia Gooding (soprano), Fretwork

The current Music Network tour by the viol consort Fretwork takes its listeners rather beyond the range of early English music than you might expect.

The players in Fretwork have acquired a taste for developing their repertoire in the most direct way possible - by commissioning new work. And they're not shy, either, of colonising some of the contrapuntal glories of Bach, on this occasion an excerpt from the Art of Fugue and a prelude and fugue from the 48.

The players' approach to their core repertoire - they covered pieces by Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell, Mico, Locke, Morley and Jenkins - followed the line of pallid detachment which so many English groups favour in this kind of music. And the clear-voiced soprano Julia Gooding adopted a similar manner.

It's a performing style where the import of everything is left to take care of itself. As in the public announcement of football or election results, the levelness of the delivery completely masks the significance which listeners are likely to find in any of the communicated content.

The extraordinary artifice of the basic approach was nowhere more evident than in the two arrangements of Bach.

Happily, the performers shed their self-imposed shackles in the two Purcell-inspired modern works. Both cross cultural divides.

Chinese composer Tan Dun's A Sinking Love sets a text by Li Po in sliding vocal lines over evocative instrumental fragments and Elvis Costello's Put Away Forbidden Playthings blends an early English flavour into a more everyday modern context.

This ESB/Music Network tour visits Mohill, Co Cavan (Saturday, 10th); Donegal (Sunday, 11th); Belfast (Wednesday, 14th); Antrim (Thursday, 15th); and Armagh (Friday, 16th). Ring 01-671 9429 for details.