Salish Sea Early Music Festival returns with Bach, Handel

||| FROM JEFFREY COHAN for SALISH SEA EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL |||

WHAT: BACH & HANDEL
WHEN: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 5:00 PM
WHERE: Orcas Adventist Fellowship Chapel at 107 Enchanted Forest Road in Eastsound
ADMISSION: suggested donation: $20 to $30 (a free will offering), 18 & under free.

Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel are to be celebrated in  this sixth program of the 2026 Salish Sea Early Music Festival featuring  soprano Maike Albrecht and harpsichordist Hans-Jürgen Schnoor, both from Lübeck in Germany, viola da gambist Susie Napper from Montreal and  baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan.

The concert, presented in collaboration with Orcas Adventist Fellowship  Church, takes place on Tuesday, May 5, 2026 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 below of all 2026 performances at Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church in Eastsound this season through late June, and also the complete schedule of this performance on Orcas (5/5), San  Juan (5/16) and Lopez (5/16) Islands.

About our Bach & Handel program

While they were born in the same year not more than 80 miles apart and are recognized as two of history’s great composers, Bach and Handel never met, although Bach attempted to meet Handel twice when the pair were 34 and then 44 years of age. Handel was then a well-traveled, internationally famous composer of Opera and Oratorio and spectacle, while Bach was a regionally respected organist and church musician who never traveled more than 250 miles from his birthplace.

The cantata “Ich habe genug” (“I am content”), was composed by Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig in 1727 for the feast Purification of Mary and is one of the most often performed and recorded of Bach’s sacred cantatas. In this cantata, based on the Song of Simeon, Bach projects a feeling of serene contentedness with life and an expression of the experience of body and soul coming to rest and in complete harmony beyond anything that mere words can convey.

The intimate and spiritually introspective “Nine German Arias” from 1725 contrast sharply with Handel’s grand operatic works composed around the same time. These are his final works to be written in his native tongue, 15 years following his move to England at the age of 25.

The program will also include Bach’s “Italian Concerto” and a Prelude by Handel for solo harpsichord, along with a flute sonata by Handel.

The Salish Sea Early Music Festival has since 2011 provided world class period instrument performances of chamber music, both familiar and rarely or never before heard in modern times, with musicians from Europe and all around the Puget Sound, the United States and Canada who are among the finest in their field around the globe.

Entrance is by donation and the concerts have always been open to all regardless of contribution. The Salish Sea Early Music Festival and is a non-profit 501c3 organization and has been granted affiliate status by Early Music America, which develops, strengthens, and celebrates early music and historically informed performance in North America.