St. Barnabas to host ‘Salish Sea Early Music’ festival, concert

The eighth annual Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents a baroque flute extravaganza, entitled “Flute Trios,” featuring three internationally celebrated baroque flutists, in a special one-day concert event at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 12 at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church (1187 Wyatt Way NW).

The program features some of the finest period instrument specialists from North America and Europe, presenting seven contrasting performances of chamber music from the Renaissance through the time of Beethoven on period instruments from all around the Salish Sea.

The festival has historically presented countless first performances in modern times of period instrument renditions of early works.

This year’s highlight performers include: Bainbridge Island’s own Janet See; Mindy Rosenfeld, from San Francisco, and Jeffrey Cohan, along with harpsichordist Jonathan Oddie.

The program will also include trios for three flutes and harpsichord as well as duos and harpsichord solos by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, James Oswald; Georg Philipp Telemann, James Hook, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier and Johannes Mattheson.

Admission is by suggested donation: $15, $20 or $25, and those 18 or younger get in for free.

Though only one performance is scheduled for Bainbridge Island, additional concerts will be held in Seattle. Visit www.salishseafestival.org for more information.

See has performed as a soloist, in chamber music groups, and in orchestras throughout North America and Europe. In London, where she lived for 12 years, she played principal flute for Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s two orchestras and for “The Taverner Players,” conducted by Andrew Parrott.

In North America, See plays principal flute with Philharmonia Baroque under Nicholas McGegan and has recorded Vivaldi and Mozart Concertos with that orchestra.

She also performs frequently with the Portland Baroque Orchestra and as guest soloist with chamber music ensembles throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Among her highly acclaimed recordings are the Vivaldi Concertos and the complete Bach Flute Sonatas, both recorded on the Harmonia Mundi label. Other labels she has recorded on include DG Archive, EMI, Erato, Hyperion and Phantom Partner. Janet is on the Early Music Faculty at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. She received her degree on the modern flute at Oberlin Conservatory, training with Robert Willoughby, and her post-graduate training was with Frans Vester in The Hague. Janet is a qualified teacher of the F.M. Alexander Technique, and currently lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington with her husband and son.

Rosenfeld, a founding member of the Baltimore Consort, has since 1989 been a member of San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. A frequent guest artist with numerous other West Coast early music ensembles, she is a mother of five who divides her time between performing, teaching, her family, and an organic garden, the fruits of which she enjoys sharing at farmers markets near her Mendocino, California home.

Cohan has received international acclaim both as a modern flutist and as one of the foremost specialists on transverse flutes from the renaissance through the early 19th century. He won the Erwin Bodky Award in Boston, and first place in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua for Ensembles in Brugge, Belgium with lutenist Stephen Stubbs.

First Prize winner of the Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Competition in New York, and recipient of grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music and the French Government, he has performed in more than 25 countries including Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, Mongolia, and for the USIA Arts America Program in the South Pacific, South America, Turkey and Portugal.

The New York Times has heralded his ability to “play several superstar flutists one might name under the table.” He lives on Fir Island in the Skagit Valley.

St. Barnabas to host ‘Salish Sea Early Music’ festival, concert
Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Cohan | Bainbridge Island’s own Janet See is a highlight performer among the musicians in this year’s annual Salish Sea Early Music Festival.

Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Cohan | Bainbridge Island’s own Janet See is a highlight performer among the musicians in this year’s annual Salish Sea Early Music Festival.