Salish Sea Early Music Festival 2015 Returns

Sunday, March 8, 1:30 p.m., Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church

— from Jeffrey Cohen —

The fifth annual 2015 Salish Sea Early Music Festival includes six programs of 16th to 19th-century chamber music on period instruments on Orcas Island, with 54 performances in nine cities around the Salish Sea in 2015 alone, and special guests from Europe, Canada, and around the Northwest and the United States.

The Salish Sea Early Music Festival features German harpsichordist Hans-Jürgen Schnoor from Lübeck and viola da gambist Susie Napper, director of the Montreal International Baroque Festival, along with flutist Jeffrey Cohan in an all-Johann Sebastian Bach performance featuring exciting new transcriptions of trio sonatas for viola da gamba, baroque flute and harpsichord in BACH TRIO SONATAS.

Bach Trio Sonatas will include the Musical Offering trio sonata, BWV 1079, the organ trio sonata, BWV 529, and the sonata for violin and obbligato harpsichord, BWV 1019, all in new transcriptions for flute, viola da gamba and harpsichord by the ensemble.

“Hans-Juergen Schnoor” (Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival, Washington, DC, 2002) ” a stunning account of Bach’s monumental “Goldberg Variations” An expressive freedom illuminating the music’s subjective beauty. As Schnoor hurtled through Bach’s contrapuntal labyrinth, the harpsichordist absorbed the audience in the rising emotional tension, culminating in a final burst of keyboard fireworks.” — Cecelia Porter, The Washington Post

“Emanuel Bach Tricentennial” (SSEMF, Victoria, February 2014) “A world of tender and brilliant magic … A music so refined, it draws and draws, yet never swamps the senses. The enormous presence of Mr. Schnoor as he covered the entire instrument with his solo statement, creating a universe of sound, was immediately apparent…Schnoor’s heightening intensity of pure invention compelled every hair follicle of attention. The audience was extremely appreciative, yet such was the virtuosity and technical brilliance of Hans Jürgen Schnoor and Jeffrey Cohan, combined with a spell-binding understatement, I couldn’t be quite sure I hadn’t dreamed it all.” — Elizabeth Courtney, Music in Victoria

A Lovely Baroque Divertissement from Brotherton, Cohan and Stubbs (SSEMF, Vancouver, January 2015) “A remarkably intimate and refreshing experience. Jeffrey Cohan has such quickness and dynamic range, such a keen control of accents, and such mastery at floating the soft limpid phrase. There should be more late afternoon concerts of this type. They are such a refreshing ‘time out’ from the rest of your schedule, especially when they involve artistry like this.” — Geoffrey Newman, Vancouver Classical Music

Complete Performance Schedule for Bach Trio Sonatas:

Lopez Island: Saturday, March 7, 2015 at 7:00 PM, Grace Church · 70 Sunset Lane · (360) 468-3477
Orcas Island: Sunday afternoon, March 8, 2015 at 1:30 PM, Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church · 107 Enchanted Forest Road in Eastsound · (360) 376-6683
San Juan Island: Sunday evening, March 8, 2015 at 7:00 PM, San Juan Island Grange · 152 – 1st Street in Friday Harbor · (360) 378-6632

About the Artists:
Cellist, gambist, continuo player par excellence, SUSIE 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. Since then she has spent two decades with a foot on either side of the Atlantic as principal cellist with several groups including Stradivaria in France, the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal and Les Boréades in Montreal, and the Trinity Consort of Portland. Her concert tours have taken her as far afield as China, Japan, New Zealand, India, the Middle East, as well as most European countries. As a member of the very active viol duo Les Voix humaines, she has discovered a new facet of musical expression in the form of musical arranging, thus providing an endlessly fascinating new repertoire for two viols. Susie Napper teaches at McGill University, and founded the Festival international Montréal Baroque which is 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.

Her recordings, which include most of the known repertoire for two viols, can be heard on Harmonia Mundi, EMI, Erato, ADDA, CBC Records, Naxos, and most notably on the ATMA label.

Harpsichordist HANS-JÜRGEN SCHNOOR from Lübeck, Germany has been cantor and organist at the St. Jakobi Church in Lübeck and music director at the Vicelinkirche in Neumünster, and is one of Germany’s leading performers of early keyboard music, and conductors of period instrument performances of the instrumental and choral works of Bach and others as director of the Neumünster Bach Choir, Concerto Lübeck, the Hamburg Consort, Orchestra Seattle/Seattle Chamber Singers and other groups. He studied piano with Edmund Schmid, organ with Walter Kraft, and conducting with Wilhelm Ehmann and Kurt Thomas. Currently professor for harpsichord, basso continuo, early performance practice and music theory at the Lübeck Conservatory of Music, he has been a faculty member also at the Church Music College of Westfalia, has won numerous awards, and has made many recordings as conductor, organist, harpsichordist and fortepianist He frequently performs as soloist on all of these keyboard instruments (including more than 110 performances of Bach’s Goldberg-Variations), and in recital with other noted instrumental and vocal soloists.

Flutist JEFFREY COHAN is director of the Salish Sea Early Music Festival, Candlelight Concerts (Seattle) and the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival (Washington, DC) and has performed in 25 countries on all transverse flutes from the renaissance through the present. He performs in Mongolia and for the second time in China in late March.