Bach to be performed at Early Music Festival

PORT TOWNSEND — The Salish Sea Early Music Festival will present Johann Sebastian Bach at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Faythe Vollrath and Jeffrey Cohan will perform in the festival’s season finale at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1020 Jefferson St.

Admission is by a $20 to $30 freewill offering at the door; those 18 and younger will be admitted free.

The program consists of transcriptions of several of Bach’s works, including the Sonata in C Minor for violin and obbligato harpsichord, works for solo harpsichord and sonatas both for obligato harpsichord and flute, and for flute and continuo (a bass line with numbers denoting harmonies from which Vollrath will improvise.)

Obligato is Italian for obligatory and, in music, refers to a subordinate instrumental part that is essential to the piece.

Vollrath also will play Johann Adam Reinken’s variations on the popular German folk tune “Schweiget mir von Weibernehmen” (German for “Shush, no more talk about womanizing”) for solo harpsichord.

Reinken was admired by Bach, who made arrangements of several of his works.

Vollrath, from Sacramento, Calif., is a late substitute for Irene Roldàn, who was unable to perform this weekend.

Vollrath has performed concerts of new music from American composers in both Serbia and France, at the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento and at the Center for New Music in San Francisco.

Vollrath also has paired Japanese harpsichord works with Japanese art at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

Vollrath earned a bachelors of music degree in piano performance from California State University in Sacramento while studying piano with Richard Cionco, an artist diploma from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under Charlotte Mattax Moersch and earned a doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook under Arthur Haas.

Cohan, a Baroque flutist, is artistic director of the Salish Sea Early Music Festival.

For more information, visit www.salishseafestival.org/porttownsend.