‘Baroque in transition: The Treble Viol’

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Submitted by the Salish Sea Early Music Festival.

“Baroque in Transition: The Treble Viol” is the final 2026 Salish Sea Early Music Festival performance, featuring treble viol player Annalisa Pappano, baroque guitarist William Simms and Jeffrey Cohan on baroque and renaissance flutes.

This concert, presented in collaboration with St. David’s Episcopal Church, takes place on Saturday, June 27, at 12:30 p.m. at St. David’s Episcopal Church at 780 Park Street in Friday Harbor. Admission is by a suggested donation (a free-will offering) of $20 to $30. Those 18 and under are free. All are welcome regardless of donation. For additional information, please see www.salishseafestival.org/sanjuan.

The transition in instrumental music as the Renaissance flowered into the Baroque through the 17th century will be explored through the perspective of the treble viol, the smaller fretted cousin of the viola da gamba, alongside transverse flutes of both the Renaissance and the Baroque, and the 17th-century guitar.

The canzona appeared in the 1570s as a more vocally inspired instrumental form in contrast to the ricercare of the Renaissance. It evolved into the familiar sonata as it exhibited ever more instrumentally virtuosic colors through the mid 1600s. At this time, diverging Italian and French styles prompted intense intellectual clashes between their proponents.

The concert uses the Renaissance transverse flute (as opposed to the recorder), music by early 17th-century Italian composers Tarquino Merula, Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde, Marco Uccelini, Giovanni Paulo Cima and Giovanni Battista Buonamente, to the mid-17th-century English composer Matthew Locke and virtuoso embellishments for treble viol by German composer Johannes Schop, and more.

Annalisa Pappano

Pappano is one of America’s leading viol players. As a member of the Ensemble Atalante, she won a Diapason d’Or and Gramophone Award. She has given concerts with the Houston Grand Opera, the Cincinnati Opera, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco, and numerous other ensembles in Belgium, England, Ireland, Colombia and Canada. Beginning originally from the violin, she plays pardessus de viole, lirone and viola da gamba. She was a lecturer in viol and performance practice at the University of Cincinnati, is the founder and artistic director of the Catacoustic Consort and led her own early music concert series in Cincinnati for 18 years before moving to Germany in 2019.

William Simms

Simms has performed on the classical guitar, lute and theorbo with many groups, including the Cleveland Opera, Apollo’s Fire, the Baltimore Consort and the Violins of Lafayette. He has recorded on the Dorian, Electra and Cantaur labels. In addition to previous teaching duties at Hood College, Mount St. Mary’s University and the Interlochen Arts Academy. A multifaceted performer of early music and equally adept on lute, theorbo and baroque guitar, he appears regularly with Apollo’s Fire, The Bach Sinfonia, Harmonious Blacksmith, The Vivaldi Project and The Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado and has toured and recorded with The Baltimore Consort. He has performed numerous operas, cantatas and oratorios with such ensembles as The Washington National Opera, The Cleveland Opera, Opera Lafayette and American Opera Theatre. Venues include The National Cathedral, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Library of Congress, The Corcoran Gallery, The Kennedy Center and The Barns at Wolftrap.

Jeffrey Cohan

Flutist 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 is 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.