LeStrange Viols’ modern premier recording of the chamber music of William Cranford on the Olde Focus Recordings division is the first major single-composer release by an American viol consort in more than two decades. Little is known about the life of composer William Cranford (fl. 1630s) beyond his remarkable surviving chamber music for viol consort, a Renaissance string ensemble that attracted the best English composers from William Byrd to Henry Purcell. Cranford’s music—by turns sonorous, expressive, quirky, and forward looking—represents some of finest surviving writing for the ensemble.