Iestyn Davies: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

The Bee Gees did it. So do Smokey Robinson, Prince and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. They all sing in the high register usually associated with female singers. Men have cultivated their upper range in falsetto for centuries. They're called countertenors — at least in the classical world — and today we find ourselves in a golden age of such singers, thanks in part to continued interest in early music. One of the best of today's crop of countertenors is Iestyn Davies (pronounced YES-tin DAY-vis). Lately, he's been exploring the meticulously crafted, melancholy songs of Elizabethan composer John Dowland. Joining Davies is lutenist Thomas Dunford, who has been affectionately dubbed “the Eric Clapton of the lute“ by the BBC. Dowland was a master of melancholy, a condition viewed differently in Elizabethan England than it is today. You might say that, back then, it was almost hip to have the blues, and Dowland instinctively knew how to tap into feelings of rejection, regret and general malaise in his music. (Dowlan