Submitted by the Salish Sea Early Music Festival

The Salish Sea Early Music Festival returns Feb. 17 at Brickworks at 7 p.m. with Simphonie Nouvelle. The concert is comprised of baroque guitarist Stephen Stubbs, co-director of the Boston Early Music Festival and Pacific Music Works, and viola da gambist Susie Napper, founder and director emeritus of the Montreal Baroque Festival, along with flutist and Salish Sea Early Music Festival director Jeffrey Cohan. They will present a program entitled “Simphonie Nouvelle plays Louis IX and J.S. Bach,” featuring many of the late 17th and early 18th-century guitarists, viola da gambists, flutists and other composers associated with the illustrious musical establishment of Louis XIV, alongside the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Presented in collaboration with Brickworks, the concert takes place on Saturday evening, Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. at Brickworks at 150 Nichols Street in Friday Harbor. Admission is by suggested donation (a free-will offering) of $20 to $30. Those 18 and under are free. For more information please see www.salishseafestival.org/sanjuan. Please see our complete San Juan Islands schedule below, and the list of all remaining performances through early July at Brickworks

Louis XIV gathered the finest musicians of France at his court in Versailles and this program features many of these baroque superstars, including guitarists Francesco Corbetta (1615-1681) and Robert de Visée (c.1655-1732), viola da gambists Sainte Colombe (c.1640-c. 1700), Marin Marais (1656-1728) and Jacques Morel (c.1680-1740), flutist Michel de la Barre (c.1675-1745), and composers Élisabeth Claude Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) and François Couperin (1668-1733). The Sonata in E Minor, BWV 1034 by Johann Sebastian Bach will be performed as well.

About the Artists

Stephen Stubbs won the Grammy Award as conductor for Best Opera Recording in 2015 and spent a thirty-year career in Europe. He returned to his native Seattle in 2006 as one of the world’s most respected lutenists, conductors, and Baroque opera specialists. Stephen founded and directs Pacific MusicWorks, based in Seattle, and is the Boston Early Music Festival’s Artistic Co-Director, co-directing the festival’s yearly opera productions, recordings of which were nominated for five Grammy awards, and have won two Echo Klassik awards and the Diapason d’Or de l’Année. Other recent appearances have included Handel’s Amadigi for Opera UCLA, Mozart’s Magic Flute and Così fan tutte in Hawaii, Handel’s Agrippina and Semele for Opera Omaha, Cavalli’s Calisto and Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie for Juilliard, and Mozart’s Il re pastore for the Merola program in San Francisco. He has conducted Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle, Edmonton, Birmingham, and Houston Symphony orchestras. His extensive discography as conductor and solo lutenist includes well over 100 CDs, many of which have received international acclaim and awards. From 2013 to 2018, Stephen Stubbs held the position of Senior Artist in Residence at the University of Washington School of Music.

Cellist and gambist Susie Napper is known for her colorful, even controversial performances of both solo and chamber repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries. She co-founded and directed the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and has acted as principal cellist with many of the most important groups in Europe and North America. She has performed in China, Japan, New Zealand, India, the Middle East, and throughout Europe. Susie Napper teaches at McGill University, the University of Montreal and the Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen and founded the Festival International Montréal Baroque which has presented in Montreal in June since 2001. She was awarded the “Prix Opus 2002” for Personality of the year by the Conseil québécois de la musique and in 2011 was named “Woman of Merit for the Arts.” She has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, EMI, Erato, ADDA, CBC Records, Naxos, and on the ATMA label.

Flutist Jeffrey Cohan has performed as soloist in 25 countries as one of the foremost specialists on all transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present. He is the only person to win both the Erwin Bodky Award in Boston and the highest prize awarded in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua in Brugge, Belgium with lutenist Stephen Stubbs. He has performed throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and worldwide for the USIA Arts America Program, and has recorded for national radio and television in the United States and throughout Europe. Many works have been written for and premiered by him. He is artistic director of the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, DC, the Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival in Illinois and Iowa, and the Salish Sea Early Music Festival.