Salish Sea Early Music Festival returns Jan. 20

Submitted by the Salish Sea Early Music Festival

The first of eight 2024 Salish Sea Early Music Festival programs, Three Centuries: Guitar, Lute and Flute features German guitarist and lutenist Michael Freimuth on theorbo (a long-necked lute) and Renaissance guitar, and Jeffrey Cohan on both Renaissance and Baroque transverse flutes. The concert takes place Wednesday, Jan. 24, at 5 p.m. (please note new time!) in theOrcas Adventist Fellowship Church, 107 Enchanted Forest Road in Eastsound. For more information please see www.salishseafestival.org/sanjuan.

This program offers an unusual and expansive journey through the music for guitar, lute and flute of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, including elaborate jazzed-up versions of well-known songs of the time, published by the incredible wind instrument virtuosi of the late 16th century, along with canzonas, sonatas and suites from Spain, Italy, England and France.

The program will include works by 16th-century composers Diego Ortiz, William Byrd, Giovanni Bassano and Girolamo Dalla Casa; 17th-century composers Giovanni Paulo Cima, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde and Giovanni Battista Buonamenti; and 18th-century composers Arcangelo Corelli and André Chéron.

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.

About the Artists

Michael Freimuth from Kiel, Germany is dedicated to the lute and guitar music of the 16th through 19th centuries and is one of the most sought-after lutenists in Europe. He has toured both as soloist and with well-known conductors and other soloists in Europe, the USA, Japan and South Korea.

He has collaborated with many well-known artists and conductors including C. Abbado, I. Bolton, P. Dijkstra, R. Goebel, Th. Hengelbrock, M. Hirasaki, K. Junghänel, E. Kirkby, A. Quarta, V. Luks, H. Max, R. Minasi, Ch. Schornsheim, R. Wilson and many others. In recent years Michael Freimuth has played in many opera productions throughout Europe including Cesti’s Orontea, Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, Handel’s Jephta, Rodelinda, Agrippina and Mozart’s Cosi under Ivor Bolton; Leclair’s Scylla under Václav Luks; Steffani’s Amor vien dal destino and Handel’s Teséo under René Jacobs; and Handel’s Rodelinda under Riccardo Minasi.

He has participated in CD recordings and performances with Concerto Köln and the Academy for Early Music Berlin. His solo recording of previously unknown sonatas by Michele Platano was released in 2017, and he has recorded lute works in Rohrau Castle by Silvius Leopold Weiss. He recorded the entire cycle of Rosary Sonatas by Biber for Deutschlandfunk with violinist Mayumi Hirasaki and harpsichordist Christine Schornsheim, and “L’Arte della scordatura with Mayumi Hirasak”, which was released in 2020.

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 the 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.