Roger North wrote of Jenkins that ‘he was a great reformer of musick in his time‚ for he got the better of the dullness of the old Fancys’ and‚ a little later‚ that he ‘did not dash upon harsh notes‚ as the Itallians doe’. Unless one knows the equable strains of this great father­figure of 17th­century English chamber music‚ one might spot a contradiction here: surely such dashing upon such ‘harsh notes’ was what reformers did in those days? That is where Jenkins’s flightiness (especially in the various trio idioms in which he excelled) is to be understood as belonging to an indigenous and conservative evolution of ‘Baroque’ traits‚ where – from the days of James I and Charles I’s courts – the violin increasingly but cautiously toyed with the upper lines‚ neutrally termed as ‘treble’. For a composer who lived for so long over the course of the century (a working life of around 60 years until his death in 1678)‚ Jenkins’s musical style is fairly consistent. There are‚ of course‚ some clear differences from era to era – such as the dichotomous role of the organ in the Caroline period (as doubling partner and vehicle for a textural ‘interlude’) towards a figured bass‚ such as we get in these 15 Fantasia­airs which date from near the end of his life. Previous Jenkins recordings‚ from both Fretwork (on Virgin) and Hespèrion XX (on Auvidis and Naïve)‚ tend to deliver either an eclectic selection (Fretwork) or the well­established 6­part works‚ dating from earlier decades (Hespèrion XX). Here we have ‘world première recordings’ of these pieces (but then you could have ‘world première recordings’ of 95 per cent of Jenkins’ output). The balanced tonal landscape‚ and gentle undemanding melodic phrases are exploited sensitively by the experienced Locke Consort and underpinned with an unfussy authority by theorbo player‚ Fred Jacobs‚ who honours Jenkins’ own instrument by keeping the organ out of the frame (usually the best option in consort music of the period‚ albeit a highly subjective one). The violins hunt in pairs‚ similar to a trio sonata‚ though without the harmonic suavity of Corelli. Jenkins’ beautiful constancy is only disrupted occasionally by a division passage on the bass viol – as in No 10 in A minor – when Susanne Braumann expertly negotiates the proverbial fly effusion on the page. One senses both the proximity of Purcell’s Sonatas as well as a poignant smile back at William Lawes. Yet‚ for all the pioneering merits of this project‚ the music is not consistently of high quality. The Lockes present an agreeable set – complete – with a gracious and congenial bonhomie. The next question is whether there is 70 minutes of great Jenkins over his several hundred compositions?