“Putting the King to Bed” Concert — Inaugural Early Music Festival Comes to the San Juans

King Louis XIV of France, "The Sun King"

This coming weekend, the Salish Sea Early Music Festival will present “Putting Louis XIV to Bed: The King’s Musicians,” the introductory concert in the 2011 Salish Sea Early Music Festival.

In this concert series, musicians will perform early music on period instruments on Lopez, San Juan and Orcas Island. The Orcas performance will be at Emmanuel Episcopal Parish on Sunday, January 16 at 1:30 p.m. at Emmanuel Church in Eastsound on Orcas Island.

Other performances of “Putting the King to Bed” will be on Saturday, January 15 at 7 p.m. at Grace Church at 70 Sunset Lane, just north of Lopez Village on Lopez Island; and on Sunday, January 16 at 7 p.m. at St. David’s Church at 780 Park Street in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

The Salish Sea Early Music Festival will give period instrument performances of familiar and seldom-heard chamber music from the Renaissance through the early 19^th century in the San Juan Islands, featuring some of the finest period instrument performers from North America and Europe along with artistic director and flutist Jeffrey Cohan.

Jeffrey Cohan. Photo courtesy of Tate Cohan

An elaborate ceremony involving the most accomplished musicians of France accompanied Louis XIV’s bedtime – and not just as a child. This in-depth exploration of 18 Trios to Put the King to Bed and other mostly unpublished late 17th-century manuscripts from the Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris will reveal the moving and irresistible melodies which surrounded Louis XIV, even when retiring.

Music by the king’s guitar instructor Robert de Visee and Marin Marais, both among the musicians who serenaded the king at bedtime, the largely unexplored Trios de la Chambre (chamber trios) of the king’s favorite composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, and many transcriptions from the king’s favorite operas and ballets are to be represented. Jeffrey Cohan discovered the earliest known solo for baroque flute and indications that the baroque bassoon was particularly prized in a manuscript prepared in 1695 by the King’s music librarian Anne Danican Philidor “L’ainé” for the Duke of Bavaria “with hopes that it might occupy some of your leisure time.” Both the bassoon and the three-piece transverse flute were newly fashionable in the 1680’s, having been most likely invented by Martin Hotteterre, who died in 1712.

“Putting Louis XIV to Bed: The King’s Musicians” will feature John Lenti on baroque guitar and theorbo (a long-necked lute), baroque bassoonist Anna Marsh, baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan and baroque violinist Courtney Kuroda, with baroque oboist Sand Dalton joining the group on Lopez only.

Unpublished works from the Library of Congress and other libraries will be given particular attention, in particular this year in the performances of music which enveloped Louis XIV, and early 19th-century repertoire for the Russian 7-string guitar and the 8-keyed flute. Unusual instrumental combinations that were familiar in earlier times will be revealed, this season in repertoire for the baroque bassoon, the renaissance transverse flute and the theorbo, a lute with an extremely long neck.

The Artists in “Putting the King to Bed”

Anna Marsh with bassoon.

Currently in great demand for regular performances in Seattle, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Canada, bassoonist Anna Marsh owns five bassoons and likes to play them. She has appeared with most of the major period instrument orchestras in North America, and has won several important competitions. With her group Ensemble Lipzodes, she toured Brazil in July 2008, Ecuador in 2010 and has recorded two cds. Anna has recorded for Centaur, Naxos, the Super Bowl and Musica Omnia Record Labels.

Flutist Jeffrey Cohan has performed for Chamber Music San Juans, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and yearly Yuletide Baroque performances at Emmanuel in Eastsound. He has performed as soloist in 25 countries, most recently Ukraine, Slovenia and Germany, on all transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present, and has won the most important prizes for period instrument performance in America and Europe.  He directs the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, DC and Concert Spirituel in Seattle.

Baroque oboist and Lopez Island resident Sand Dalton has performed and recorded with  the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, Magnificat, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra of Vancouver, B.C. He has been of the faculties of the New England Conservatory, the University of British Columbia and Longy School of Music, and has taught at summer workshops for the San Francisco Early Music Society, the Vancouver Early Music Program, the Amherst Early Music Workshop and the International Baroque Institute at Longy. In 2000 be began directing his own summer workshop for baroque oboes and bassoons on Lopez Island.

John Lenti with lute

Baroque violinist Courtney Kuroda received her Master’s degree in performance from the Indiana University, Bloomington’s prestigious Early Music Institute where she studied with Stanley Ritchie. Courtney has performed with LA Baroque, Ars Antigua in Chicago, Opera Lafayette in Washington D.C and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. Ms. Kuroda recently performed at the Boston Early Music Festival with Les Brunettes and is currently active in the Seattle area performing with Baroque Northwest, Seattle Pro Musica and the Seattle Baroque Orchestra.

Lutenist John Lenti has performed repertoire stretching from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries on lute and theorbo at the Bloomington and Boston Early Music Festivals, the Festival Guldener-Herbst in Germany, and the Magnolia Baroque Festival. John is associate director and member of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and has performed with the Seattle Opera and the Pittsburgh Opera, and numerous other ensembles including Dulces Exuviae with soprano Linda Tsatsanis. He has recorded The Courtesan’s Arts, with Ellen Hargis on Oxford University Press and On the Amorous Lyre with La Monica. John studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts, in London with Jacob Heringman and Elizabeth Kenny, and with Nigel North at Indiana University.

This first annual Early Music Festival will present three additional programs of early chamber music on period instruments on Lopez, Orcas and San Juan Islands in February, March and April of 2011: “Irish and Scottish Baroque and the Russian Guitar” on February 6 and 7, “An Elisabethan Broken Consort” on March 5 and 6 and “Johann Sebastian Bach: A Musical Offering” on April 9 and 10.

For further information:

Grace Church  •  (360) 468-3477  •  gracechurchlopez@rockisland.com
St. David’s Episcopal Church  •  (360) 378-5360  •  saintdavid@rockisland.com
Emmanuel Episcopal Parish  •  (360) 376-2352  •   emmanuel@rockisland.com

The suggested donation, a free will offering towards expenses, will be $15 for each of the concerts. Youth 18 and under are free. For further information the public is requested to call (360) 468-3477 on Lopez Island, (360) 376-2352 on Orcas Island, and (360) 378-5360 in Friday Harbor. Pay-as-you-wish tickets, season passes and additional information will be available through www.brownpapertickets.com, as well as at the door. Please see www.concertspirituel.org for further information.