Salish Sea Early Music Festival returns

This program features music by prominent soloists, all composers, who frequently played for Louis XIV, including the king’s guitar instructor Robert De Visée and his Italian predecessor Francesco Corbetta, along with a favorite viola da gambist at the court, Marin Marais and his teacher Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, as well as Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, a young harpsichordist and one of the few famous female musicians of her time whose playing and compositions Louis deeply admired and subsidized. The program will include the earliest known French solo specifically for the transverse flute by the king’s court music librarian André Danican Philidor L’Aisné, which is not to be heard elsewhere as Jeffrey Cohan discovered it in a relatively unknown and as yet unpublished manuscript in the Library of Congress, alongside solos performed by Caroline Nicolas and William Simms for viola da gamba and guitar.

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The concert, presented in collaboration with Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church, takes place on Wednesday, May 7 at 5:00 PM at Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church at 107 Enchanted Forest Road in Eastsound. Admission is by suggested donation (a free will offering) of $20 to $30. Those 18 & under are free.  All are welcome regardless of donation. For additional information please see  www.salishseafestival.org/orcas.

Please see our complete schedule of performances of this program on San Juan, Lopez and Orcas Islands below, and a list of all remaining 2025 performances at Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church in Eastsound this season through early July.
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More information about this program:
The ever present music at the court of Louis XIV reflected the emotional and spiritual life of louis XIV and his contemporaries which resonates with us today, but it also served as a powerful political tool affirming the king’s authority, prestige and status in France and internationally. Louis XIV’s Le Musique de la Chambre, which he had inherited from François I in the early 16th century, generated much of the almost constant musical activity, both on a grand scale including vocalists, and extremely intimate with just a few musicians, as is to be the focus in this program, which features several of the illustrious soloist/composers of the court.

The French musical perspective emulated reason and moderation, with sensory perception serving comprehension. French musicians aspired to thrill the senses via the intellect, in a continual search for grace and elegance. Dance was viewed as the consummate expression of the mastery of body and mind and the epitome of aristocratic art, and Louis XIV took daily dance lessons for 20 years alongside his frequent guitar lessons. Every French court and church musician reflected their determination to depict refinement and true sentiments, while dispensing with excessive turbulence and contrast. All of this contrasted greatly with the Italian focus on the direct expression of emotions via their virtuoso and flamboyant approach, which certainly was admired in some circles in France.

Our guest musicians:
Noted for her “eloquent artistry and rich, vibrant sound” (Gainesville Times), viola da gambist CAROLINE NICOLAS has been praised as “one of the finest gambists working today” (Gotham Early Music Scene). Ensembles she has worked with include the English Concert, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Mercury Chamber Orchestra, Ars Lyrica Houston, Juilliard Baroque, Harmonia Stellarum, Philharmonia Baroque, Pacific MusicWorks, Kammerorchester Basel, New World Symphony, and Sinfonieorchester Liechtenstein. Notable venues include the KKL Luzern, Berliner Philharmonie, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, and Benaroya Hall. Distinctions include having been selected as a fellow of The English Concert in America, an award given to young musicians “who appear likely to make significant contributions to the field of early music.”  More information is available at www.carolinenicolas.com.

WILLIAM SIMMS, lute, theorbo & guitar, appears regularly with the Bach Sinfonia and performs with Apollo’s Fire, Harmonious Blacksmith, Olde Friends Concert Artists and the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado. He has performed numerous operas, canatatas and oratorios with such ensembles as Cleveland Opera, the Baltimore Consort, Opera Lafayette, Opera Vivente, American Opera Theatre and the Washington National Opera. Venues include The National Cathedral, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Library of Congress, The Corcoran Gallery, Wolftrap and The Kennedy Center. He serves on the faculties of Towson University, Mt. St. Mary’s University, Interlochen Arts Camp as well as Hood College, where he is founder and director of the Hood College Early Music Ensemble. He has recorded for the Dorian, Centaur and Eclectra labels.

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.  He has performed throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and worldwide for the USIA Arts America Program.  He 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.