Salish Sea Music Festival

On May 3 on Lopez Island, the 2025 Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents its fifth of eight programs at Grace Church through July of early chamber music performed on period instruments titled “Louis XIV’s Musicians” and featuring viola da gambist Caroline Nicolas from New York City, baroque guitarist William Simms from Baltimore and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan.

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Danican Philidor L’Aisné, which is not to be heard elsewhere as Cohan discovered it in a relatively unknown and as yet unpublished manuscript in the Library of Congress, alongside solos performed by Nicolas and Simms for viola da gamba and guitar.

The concert, presented in collaboration with Grace Church, takes place on Saturday, May 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Grace Church at 70 Sunset Lane. Admission is by suggested donation (a free will offering) of $20 to $30. Those 18 and under are free. All are welcome regardless of donation.

Complete schedule in the San Juans for “Louis XIV’s Musicians”:

San Juan Island: Saturday, May 3, 12:30 p.m., St. David’s Episcopal Church, 780 Park Street, www.salishseafestival.org/sanjuan.

Lopez Island: Saturday, May 3, 6:30 p.m., Grace Church, 70 Sunset Lane, 360-468-3477, www.salishseafestival.org/lopez.

Orcas Island: Wednesday, May 7, 5 p.m., Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church, 107 Enchanted Forest Road, 360-376-6683,

www.salishseafestival.org/orcas.

Complete remaining schedule for the 2025 Salish Sea Early Music Festival on Lopez, all at Grace Episcopal Church:

Saturday, May 24, 6:30 p.m.: Concerti from the Court of Frederick the Great.

· David Schrader, harpsichord.

· Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute.

· Elizabeth Phelps, baroque violin.

· Courtney Kuroda, baroque violin.

· Christine Moran, baroque viola.

· Susie Napper, baroque cello.

A completely new assortment of concerti for harpsichord and flute from the illustrious members of the musical establishment of flutist Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, including CPE Bach, Johann Joachim Quantz and the king himself.

Saturday, June 14 (rescheduled from June 7), 6:30 p.m.: Folk song from three centuries II.

· Oleg Timofeyev, renaissance lute, English guitar and 7-string guitar (made in 1820).

· Jeffrey Cohan, renaissance, baroque and 8-keyed flutes (London, 1820).

Renaissance Psalms (~1620), Irish and Scottish baroque (~1720) and folk music as interpreted during Beethoven’s lifetime (~1820) in a new program of highly experimental renditions of popular music from three centuries performed on five transverse flutes and three plucked instruments.

Saturday, July 12, 6:30 p.m.: Johann Sebastian Bach.

· Irene Roldàn, harpsichord.

· Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute.

Spanish harpsichordist Irene Roldàn from Basel and Cohan interpret Bach’s phenomenal music for flute and harpsichord.

To be rescheduled when Olena’s visa is approved: European Tour 1690-1790.

· Olena Zhukova, harpsichord.

· Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute.

An excursion through a century of transformation and diversity by decade and culture within the baroque and classical periods, through the perspective of composers for harpsichord and flute from France, Italy, Scotland, Germany and Ukraine.