Early Music Festival to conclude concert series this weekend

Published 1:30 am Saturday, June 27, 2026

PORT TOWNSEND — The Salish Sea Early Music Festival will conclude its 2026 series with “Baroque in Transition: The Treble Viol” at 2 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1020 Jefferson St., Port Townsend.

A $20 to $30 free-will offering is requested. Youths 18 and younger will be admitted free.

The concert will feature Annalisa Pappano, from Munich, playing the pardessus de viole; Billy Simms, from Baltimore, playing the quitar and lute; and Jeffrey Cohan, the festival’s artistic director, playing the baroque flute.

In this final concert, the festival will explore the transition in instrumental music as the Renaissance flowered into the Baroque during the 17th century.

The program will begin with music for renaissance transverse flute, treble viol and guitar from Italian composers Tarquino Merula, Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde, Marco Uccelini, Giovanni Paulo Cima and Giovanni Battista Buonamente.

That will followed by works by English composer Matthew Locke and German composer Johannes Schop.

Finishing up the program are contrasting works for the baroque transverse flute by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lully and Italian violinist Archangelo Corelli, and a suite by early 18th century French composer Louis-Antoine Dornel.

For more information, visit www.salishseafestival.org.