Submitted by the Salish Sea Early Music Festival.

The 2023 Salish Sea Early Music Festival on San Juan Island kicks off Sunday afternoon Jan. 29 at 12:30 p.m. at Brickworks, with “The Italian Canzona” featuring renaissance recorders, transverse flute, viola, and bassoon. Admission is a suggested donation of $20 or $25 (a free-will offering), 18 and under are free.

The twelfth annual 2023 Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents seven programs beginning with Italian Four-Part Canzonas with Vicki Boeckman (renaissance recorders), Jeffrey Cohan (renaissance transverse flute), Lindsey Strand-Polyak (viola) and Anna Marsh (dulcian, or renaissance bassoon).

The concert will provide an in-depth exploration of the rarely-heard Italian four-part canzona which blossomed in print from 1582 through the early decades of the 1600s and was inspired by French and Flemish chansons from the early 1500s. It will include music ranging from 1529, marking the beginning of commercial music printing in Europe, through 1636 at which point more “modern” stylistic forms such as the familiar sonata began to supplant the canzona, which bridged renaissance and baroque musical styles. Canzonas by Andrea and Giovanni Cima, Biumi, Canale, Buonamente, Maschera, Ardemanio, Frescobaldi and Corradini are to be included in the program alongside examples of the instrumental renditions of French and Flemish songs that inspired them, all performed on recorder, transverse flute, viola and renaissance bassoon (dulcian).

These copies of 16th-century instruments represent a most unusual blend of instruments that may have been quite commonly heard then.

Please see www.salishseafestival.org/sanjuan for more information, including a full schedule of events.