Whidbey Island festival brings Neapolitan Baroque music to Coupeville, Freeland

Whidbey Island Music Festival will bring its Neapolitan program, Heavenly Harmonies: The Neapolitan Masters, to Coupeville and Freeland with two performances that turn a classical concert into a local cultural draw. The festival is pitching Naples as the “glittering cultural capital of the Baroque era,” a theme that links 18th-century Italian music to two Island County venues and to the summer traffic that fills village streets.

The first concert is set for 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 10, at Nordic Lodge, 63 Jacobs Road, Coupeville. The second will follow at 3 p.m. Saturday, July 11, at St. Augustine’s in-the-Woods, 5217 South Honeymoon Bay Road, Freeland. With dates split between the north and south ends of the island, the festival is positioning the program to reach both Coupeville and South Whidbey audiences in a single weekend.

The program centers on music by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Nicola Porpora, Alessandro Scarlatti, Arcangelo Corelli and Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer. That lineup gives the festival a distinctly historical profile, with Corelli’s Op. 6 concerti grossi widely regarded as foundational to the genre and one van Wassenaer work carrying an attribution mystery that Dutch scholar Albert Dunning resolved in 1980. The result is a repertory that reaches beyond a single composer and instead maps the broader musical network that grew out of Naples.

Founder and artistic director Tekla Cunningham said the concert will offer audiences the “passion, beauty and creativity” that made Naples the musical capital of the 18th century. Cunningham founded the festival in 2006, and Whidbey Island Music Festival says it is the island’s only live classical music festival, now in its 20th anniversary season. The organization also offers free student tickets for all events, a policy that keeps the concerts open to younger listeners and gives local schools and families a low-cost entry point into live chamber music.

The lineup includes period-instrument specialists led by Cunningham and mezzo-soprano Cecilia Duarte, along with Cynthia Miller Freivogel, Brandon Vance, Ethan Lin, Stef Creswell, Elisabeth Reed, Ross Gilliland and Henry Lebedinsky. Duarte was a soloist on the GRAMMY-winning album Duruflé: The Complete Choral Works, and The New York Times has praised her as “A creamy voiced mezzo-soprano.” Lebedinsky serves as Missioner for Music at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church on Whidbey Island, tying the Freeland performance to an established island musical presence. The festival also says the intermission tea and refreshments help create a sense of connection among concertgoers, another sign that its reach extends well beyond the concert hall.