Monday is both St George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday, as you may have noticed from the current blizzard of Bard-related interest as part of the preparations for the 'Cultural Olympiad'.

Of course, April 23rd is more of an official birthday of convenience – the Swan of Avon may have been baptised on April 26, 1564, but like so much about Shakespeare, his actual date of birth isn't known. However, he did apparently die on April 23, 1616, so if the birthdate is correct, that would have made for a neat, if relatively short – by modern standards – life.

Anyway, to mark what is quite possibly his 448th birthday, Monday sees the release of a new disc of settings of Shakespeare sonnets, the latest project of Robert Hollingworth, who won Gramophone's 2011 Early Music Award for his disc including Striggio's Mass in 40 Parts with his vocal group I Fagiolini.

Hollingworth directed the whole six-month recording project, which features British musicians from a variety of genres performing new arrangements of 11 of the sonnets.

These range from I Fagiolini's a cappella rendition of Sonnet 115, here taking its title from the couplet to give the very modern-sounding title Love is a Babe, to perhaps the best-known Sonnet, Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day, performed by folk-singer Cara Dillon.

You can hear more of the performances by clicking here, or watch a short video on the project by clicking here .

For the recording, modern instruments combine with viols, cornets, sackbuts, curtals, shawms, lutes, a harpsichord, virginals, dulcimer and early trumpet. Even the drums are renaissance style, played by leading session drummer Geoff Dugmore, who's worked with rock artists including Rod Stewart, Tina Turner and Robbie Williams.

Erin Headley plays the lirone on the disc – an instrument now played by only a very few performers, not least due to its reputation for being fiendishly tricky!

Headley, widely acknowledged as the leading exponent of the instrument and director of early music ensemble Atalante, has been greatly responsible for bringing the instrument back into modern usage, and has written about it for The New Grove and the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments.

Also featured is the theorbo: it's played by lutenist Lynda Sayce, who also contributes lutes and Renaissance guitars to the project, and is director of lute ensemble Chordophony and a lute scholar and teacher. She also maintains an online resource about the theorbo.

The instrument used for the recording is a replica of an original made by Magno Dieffopruchar III in Venice in 1608, and now in the Royal College of Music's Donaldson collection.

The modern version was made by luthier David Van Edwards and – as Sayce acknowledges – 'is a BIG instrument'. Not surprisingly – well actually, very surprisingly! –, she also has a 'folding' travel theorbo, also made by Van Edwards, which is apparently somewhat more airline-friendly.

For those with a deeper interest in the matter, there's a fascinating piece on flying with lutes on Sayce's website.

Shakespeare: The Sonnets is released on Monday, April 23rd by Active Distribution