Salish Sea Early Music Festival Brings Folk, Baroque Sounds to Freeland March 22

Guitarist and lutenist Oleg Timofeyev and flutist Jeffrey Cohan will perform "Folk, Baroque and Beyond: Airs from Three Centuries" at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 22 at the Unitarian church on Highway 525 in Freeland, presented by the Salish Sea Early Music Festival in collaboration with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

The program traces three centuries of popular and art music, moving from Dutch Renaissance psalm tunes of around 1620 through Scottish and Irish baroque airs of around 1720 to folk melodies as interpreted during Beethoven's lifetime around 1820. The festival has framed the geographic arc as Holland (1630), Scotland (1750) and France (1830), with repertoire drawn from Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic periods.

Timofeyev will perform on lute, English guitar and 7-string guitar. Cohan will cycle through renaissance, baroque and 8-keyed flutes, with the full program spanning three plucked instruments and five transverse flutes across the centuries. The festival describes the concert as "a completely new program expanding upon highly innovative research completed for last year's similar program."

Admission is by a suggested free-will offering of $20 to $30. Attendees 18 and under are admitted free, and the festival notes that all are welcome regardless of donation.

The Freeland date falls within the festival's tentative March 20-28 regional run for the Scotland program, which also includes a stop at the Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church on 107 Enchanted Forest Road in Eastsound. The Salish Sea Early Music Festival stages baroque chamber music on period instruments across a wide swath of the Pacific Northwest, with 2026 performances scheduled in Port Townsend, Seattle, Bellingham, Tacoma, Lopez Island, Orcas Island, San Juan Island, Vashon Island, Whidbey Island, the Skagit Valley, Spokane, Colville, Leavenworth and Vancouver, B.C. The festival's 2025 season totaled 103 performances across 14 Washington cities.

The 2026 roster draws performers from Ukraine, Switzerland, Germany, Montreal and across the United States. Additional program information for the Freeland concert is available at salishseafestival.org/whidbey, with the full festival schedule posted as venues are confirmed at salishseafestival.org.