Carolyn Anderson Surrick is a pioneer in the fusion of Renaissance and Baroque music with Celtic folk traditions. A player of the viola da gamba, she is the founder of Ensemble Galilei, which she has called a Celtic/early music crossover group. Surrick was born on May 31, 1950. When she was 16, she borrowed a viola da gamba, a small, somewhat cello-like instrument used as a foundation for the harmonies in Baroque music, and she immediately fell in love with its sound and began lessons. Surrick attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, studying music and graduating in 1982. She went on for a master's degree in musicology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and has since lived in the region. Surrick completed her master's in 1990 and formed Ensemble Galilei that same year. The group was named not for astronomer Galileo Galilei but for his father, the composer, theorist, and mathematician Vincenzo Galilei, who believed that Renaissance music had become too complex and had lost its connection with ordinary listeners. She saw parallels with the situation of classical music in the modern world, and the ensemble began to seek out ways of fusing Baroque and Renaissance music with Celtic folk styles; she has said that its style contains elements of a classical string quartet, period-instrument ensemble, and the Celtic folk music of Irish band The Chieftains. The group's members are all women. Surrick has also performed with Voices of the Golden Age and the Smithsonian Chamber Players. In the film The Pelican Brief, she was featured as a musician. Ensemble Galilei began to find bookings soon after its formation and has performed hundreds of concerts. The group has a catalog of more than 15 recordings on the Telarc, Dorian/Sono Luminus, and its own Maggie's Music and Ensemble Galilei labels. Surrick has also appeared as a soloist on recordings; in 2020, she appeared with lutenist Ronn McFarlane on the eclectic recital album Fermi's Paradox.