Early Music Festival to feature Bach, Jacquet
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 3, 2026
PORT TOWNSEND — The Salish Sea Early Music Festival will present Bach and Jacquet 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 Irene Roldan, a Spanish harpsichordist who lives in Basel, Switzerland, and Jeffrey Cohan, a flutist who is the festival’s artistic director.
The concert will feature music by Johann Sebastian Bach and French composers Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Louis Couperin and Pancrace Royer.
De La Guerre, a favorite of France’s King Louis XIV, was born 20 years before Bach, and her compositions for solo keyboard, her work developing the cantata and her integration of French and Italian musical styles laid the groundwork for the techniques and forms that Bach would use and continue to develop.
The program will include Bach’s sonatas in E Major and G Minor and a transcription for flute of his violin sonata in C Minor.
Also planned are de La Guerre’s Sonata in D Major and harpsichord solos, including de La Guerre’s Prélude in D Minor, Royer’s La Zaïde and Couperin’s Suite in F Major.
The festival will conclude its Port Townsend performances June 28 with “The Treble Viol,” featuring Annalisa Poppano, William Simms and Cohan.
For more information, visit www.salishseafestival.org.
