25 years ago on the 11th of September I was changing planes in Amsterdam when I had a call from my son Ned. Get to a screen, he said. I just glimpsed a news channel before boarding the next flight, enough to see the twin towers on fire. Cloistered away in St Gerold, which only had a tiny black and white tv that rarely worked, we knew something terrible had happened but weren’t quite sure what. The Dowland Project had three blissful days of music-making almost completely ignorant of what was going beyond the walls of the Propstei.  We finished the album that would eventually be called Care-Charming Sleep, and treated ourselves to a celebratory meal in the refectory, then Manfred Eicher said let’s go back into the chapel and record some more. It was almost midnight. In retrospect it’s almost as though he wanted to prolong this moment of musical enchantment and stave off returning to the outside world. We had no more music so we made it up, inspired by a book of medieval poems I happened to have with me; John Surman, Barry Guy, Maya Homburger and Stephen Stubbs absolutely on fire. Our nocturnal explorations would become half of the Night Sessions album several years later, still one of the recordings I’m most proud of. 

Care-Charming Sleep is where you’ll find ‘Ancor che col partire’, my tribute to Maria Pia de Vito and the late great John Taylor, and Refrain 4 - Amor dov'è la fe', Monteverdi’s Lamento della ninfa, my most streamed track (not intended as a statement about gender, incidentally - I just don't see why sopranos should get all the best tunes). It had some great press (Sunday Times and Classic FM Records of the Year) plus the inevitable excoriating outburst or two. There’s something reassuring about Christmas Carols appearing the same week as the anniversary of Care-Charming Sleep; innocence wasn’t entirely lost on September 11, 2001.