After being a fixture on the early music scene in North America for over 20 years, Josh Lee felt like he'd hit a creative and professional plateau. “I had the unpleasant realization that I was no longer growing,” Lee said. “That I was only moving laterally, especially artistically.” He first scaled back on his freelancing, but found it wasn't enough. Finally he decided to take a year-long sabbatical from life on the road so he could focus on something he hadn't given time to in many years: personal development.

“The life of a freelancer requires you to always be on the move, and most of my career was built upon the music I was hired to play. I wanted to get back to music that was personally fulfilling – music that I connected to emotionally, that had something to teach me.” Over the course of reacquainting himself, Lee's focus and point of view snowballed rapidly. He was returning to his instrument, the viola da gamba, with an enthusiasm he'd almost believed had vanished. So he made a decision. He would not only learn the music but, when inspired, record it.

That would prove easier said than done.

Due to a series of unpredictable life-events, Lee found himself in a rapid series of moves that brought him from Florida to Los Angeles, hop-scotching his way through each city. But instead of allowing these disruptions to become roadblocks, Lee decided to use them. “Sometimes you just have to work with where you're at. When the music is ready, you just have to go with it.” The first session happened at Bear Machine Studios in Jacksonville, FL, before it's relocation. The second batch was made in a loft in Downtown Los Angeles, between the intermittent gasps of the bus stop beneath window. The final set was made in a temporary recording space in Glendale, California. What started as a simple concept, all to be recorded in one location, turned into an unexpected travel diary.

When choosing the music for “Unaccompanied”, Lee had no agenda. Instead of structuring an album the way he would a concert program, he decided to let his curiosity lead the way. And so the album grew, organically, each piece chosen because it was reconnecting him to the instrument, not from anything he wanted to prove. “There's something truly liberating about playing music without any particular agenda. Playing for pleasure is a rarity in the life of a professional musician.”

But perhaps the most surprising part of this entire process arrived in a form Lee had never imagined for himself -- composing. What began as an offhand nod to a familiar Abel piece expanded every time he revisited it. Before long he found himself entertaining the questions “where should this go next?” and “how should this end?” It was not lost on him that most of the composers he found himself currently inspired by not only composed for the viol, but played it as well. It's why he's so often described them as “teachers from beyond the grave.” Over the course of recording this album, that realization brought with it a real interest to add to that lost tradition himself. “If the viol is going to remain a living instrument, then I think we have to keep adding the conversation in whatever ways we can. Introit is my contribution for the moment.”

Josh Lee has more composition ideas brewing, and plenty more solo viol music to lay down. “Unaccompanied” is the first in a series. The second is currently underway.