Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents ‘Songs Without Words’

Submitted by the Salish Sea Early Music Festival

The Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents “Songs without Words: 1550 to 1750” at 7 p.m., Friday, April 13 at Brickworks in Friday Harbor. The event features Montreal’s viola da gambist Susie Napper and renaissance and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan.

This program will include Renaissance two-part settings of 16th-century French songs, including selections from Giovanni Paulo Cima’s “Concerti Ecclesiastici,” examples of the luscious airs de cour from the time of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, and favorite Scottish and Irish airs as rendered by 18th-century instrumentalists.

Brickworks is located at 150 Nichols St. in Friday Harbor. Admission is by suggested donations of $15, $20 or $25 and those 18 are under are free.

A performance will also be held at noon on Saturday, April 14 at Grace Church, at 70 Sunset Ln. on Lopez, as well as on 7 p.m., April 14, at the Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church, at 107 Enchanted Forest Rd. on Orcas.

Cellist, gambist and continuo player par excellence, Napper is known for her colorful, even controversial performances of both solo and chamber repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries. Having spent her childhood in an artistic milieu in London, in her late teens she moved to New York to study at the Juilliard School, then to the Paris Conservatoire. San Francisco followed, where, after a foray into contemporary music, she co-founded and directed the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Visit, www.salishseafestival.org/sanjuan, for more information.

2018 Schedule

The Capable Virtuoso: 1 p.m., Sunday, May 20

Johann Mattheson’s “The Capable Virtuoso”, published in Hamburg in 1720, sets the tone for this program of trio sonatas inspired by Corelli and the idea that Italian, French, and German styles might be fused in an integrated musical style.

Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto: 1 p.m., Sunday, May 27

The fifth Brandenburg Concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach and other works for flute, violin, harpsichord and string chamber orchestra.

Frederick the Great: 7 p.m. Friday, June 8

Slvius Leopold Weiss, the most prolific and highly esteemed lutenist of the baroque and teacher of Frederick the Great, wrote sonatas for obbligato lute and flute from which this program branches out to explore music at the court of the flutist King Frederick II of Prussia.