Treble viol, baroque guitar and flute — the opening performance among seven in the 2018 Salish Sea Early Music Festival — features Annalisa Pappano from Cincinnati, one of the world’s foremost players of treble viol, who also plays the pardessus de viole, lirone and viola da gamba and directs the Catacoustic Consort, and Michael Freimuth from Kiel Germany, one of Europe’s most active performers on baroque guitar and theorbo, along with Renaissance and Baroque flutist and artistic director Jeffrey Cohan.

The treble viol was widely used during the 17th and early 18th centuries but is extremely seldom heard today, as is also true of the Renaissance transverse flute. This exploration of mostly French and Italian repertoire for treble viol, baroque guitar and flute from about 1625 to 1725, will present solos, duos and trios by Buonamente, Sweelinck, Heudelinne, Lully, DeVisee and Cheron.

The concert opens Saturday, Jan. 27 at noon at Grace Episcopal Church. For more info, visit salishseafestival.org/lopez. Admission is by suggested donation: $15, $20 or $25 (a free will offering), and those 18 and under are free.

Pappano, artistic director of the Catacoustic Consort, performs throughout the United States and Europe on treble viol, pardessus de viole, lirone and viola da gamba. Her playing has been described as “mercurial and enchanting” and “with a sound that is lighter than air with the airy luster of gilding on the mirrors of a rococo drawing room.”

Pappano is a member of Atalante (England) and has performed with numerous other ensembles including the Houston Grand Opera, the Cleveland Opera, the Portland Opera, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Les Voix Baroques, Opera Atelier, the Toronto Consort, the Concord Ensemble, Cappella Artemisia (Bologna), the Dublin Drag Orchestra, Wildcat Viols, and Consortium Carissimi.

Pappano has taught at Viola da Gamba Society of America national conclaves, the Viola da Gamba Society Pacific Northwest and Northeast chapters, the San Diego Early Music Workshop, Viols West, the Madison Early Music Workshop, and has been a guest lecturer at numerous universities. Pappano led the Catacoustic Consort to win the grand prize in the Naxos Early Music America Live Recording Competition and recorded a program of Italian laments on the Naxos label. She studied with Wendy Gillespie at Indiana University’s Early Music Institute and Catharina Meints at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She is currently teaching viola da gamba at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Freimuth is among today’s most highly sought after lute players both as a soloist and in ensemble with others, including well known German Baroque orchestras such as the Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, with whom he toured the United States, the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Thomanerchor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. He has worked for many years alongside conductor Ivor Bolton in opera productions in Munich, Paris, London, Amsterdam and for the Salzburger Festspiele.

Freimuth has made numerous recordings for, among others, the Berlin Musical Instruments Museum. His primary focus is in dealing with the baroque lute and works of Sylvius Leopold Weiss and Bach, including a solo CD with hitherto unknown works by Weiss, played on an original lute from 1740, and arrangements of songs of Schubert’s time on guitars of this period, including most recently a version of the complete “Winterreise” song cycle by Franz Schubert for 9-string guitar. He is co-editor of the facsimile volume “Lute music from Schloss Rohrau,” including works by Weiss. He studied the guitar in Essen and Vienna with K. Scheit and K. Ragossnig, and the lute with K. Junghänel in Cologne. Michael Freimuth has taught at the Hamburg Music Conservatory since 2008.

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