“Springtime Baroque: Airs for Spring” is the fifth program in this year’s Salish Sea Early Music Festival and features soprano Arwen Myers, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan in a spring-inspired program of music by Handel, Bach, Couperin and others from the first half of the 18th century, performed on instruments with which these musicians would have been familiar.
Selections offered in this Springtime Celebration are to include selections from the Easter Oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, the cantata “Le Printems” (“Spring”) by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, airs celebrating spring by Toussaint Bordet for soprano with flute, Couperin’s harpsichord solos “Les Fauvétes Plaintives” and “La Linote-éfarouchée”, both evocative of bird calls, and “Singe, Seele” (“Sing, my soul”) and “Flammende Rose” (“Flaming Rose”) from Georg Frideric Handel’s “9 German Arias.”
Presented in collaboration with Grace Episcopal Church, the concert takes place on Saturday afternoon, April at 1 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church at 70 Sunset Lane off of Fisherman Bay Road on Lopez Island. Admission is by suggested donation (a free will offering) of $20 to $30. Those 18 & under are free. For more information please see www.salishseafestival.org/lopez. Please see our complete list of all remaining performances on Lopez Island through early July below, as well as a list of all three performances of this program on Lopez, San Juan and Orcas Islands.
The Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents early chamber music on period instruments around Salish Sea and in Eastern Washington, and is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Salish Sea Early Music Festival is proud to be an affiliate organization of Early Music America, which develops, strengthens, and celebrates early music and historically informed performance in North America.
About the Artists
Soprano ARWEN MYERS performs early and modern repertoire with many of the nation’s premiere ensembles including Portland Baroque Orchestra, Early Music Vancouver, Pacific MusicWorks, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Seraphic Fire, Bach Akademie Charlotte and Bach Collegium San Diego and has enjoyed working with such notable conductors as Nicholas McGegan, Monica Huggett, David Fallis, John Butt, David Hill, Scott Allen Jarrett, Erick Lichte and Matthew Dirst. A native of Augusta, Georgia, Arwen holds advanced degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with Alan Bennett and Patricia Brooks Havranek. Based in Portland, Oregon, she is Executive and Co-Artistic Director of Northwest Art Song.
Harpsichordist ELISABETH WRIGHT has taught for almost 4 decades at Indiana University School of Music and as one of America’s most highly respected harpsichordists has collaborated with numerous artists of international renown.
Baroque flutist JEFFREY COHAN is artistic director of the Salish Sea Early Music Festival and has performed in 25 countries on flutes from the renaissance through the present.
