Director of the Sydney-based Marais Project, an early music ensemble, she first heard it when she was completing her studies at the Sydney Conservatorium.
The viola da gamba, also known as a bass viol, is an early string instrument played with a bow that preceded the cello and was played in the Renaissance and Baroque periods although, as the ensemble demonstrates, it can also play contemporary and folk music.
The ensemble will be giving a concert, Viol Dreaming, in Dunedin on March 7 as part of the New Zealand International Early Music Festival.
''I heard the viola da gamba for the first time in [Bach's] St John Passion. There's an aria with a solo part for the viola da gamba and from that moment it was the instrument I wanted to play. It had a different sound. There was something about it that attracted me,'' she said in a phone interview from Sydney.
It is held between the knees to play, has seven strings and goes higher and lower than a cello and has a very resonant sound because of the gut strings. It has frets and can play chords that would be difficult to play on a cello.
The quality of its sound is more like the voice than any other instrument, she said.
In 2000, the year of the Sydney Olympics, Eriksson, a keen sportswoman, decided to give herself a goal that she could carry out over the next couple of decades, she explained.
''I came up with the idea of the Marais Project, playing all Marin Marais' music in concerts. He was the greatest composer and performer of the Baroque period in France and he's written five books with about 500 pieces of music.''
The group has performed about 80% of them so far.
The core members of the group, Eriksson and Catherine Upex on violas da gamba, soprano Belinda Montgomery and Tommie Andersson who plays renaissance lute, the spectacular theorbo and 1820s classical guitar, and other colleagues on violin or harpsichord, give three concerts a year in Sydney which they repeat in regional areas.
The members also belong to other groups. Eriksson plays in Sounds Baroque for Musica Viva, giving about 100 concerts a year in schools around Australia.
She enjoys playing in small ensembles of eight to 10 musicians not only for the intimacy, but also for the clarity of sound and that each has their own part, they are not doubling with anyone else, she said.
Although their core repertoire is French Baroque, they like variety. In their Dunedin concert, the first time they have played in this country, the four will perform a variety of pieces, from John Dowland, through Marin Marais (of course), pieces by Pierre Bouteiller and Monteclaire as well as a Spanish folk song by John Paul Jones, bass player of Led Zeppelin, and an Edith Piaf song.
They first played Piaf at a Bastille Day dinner and it went down a bomb and they have since recorded a couple of her songs, she said.
Viol Dreaming is about the idea that there are different dreams in different places, she said.
While in Dunedin, Jennifer Eriksson will also take a viol workshop as part of the festival.
