Salish Sea Early Music Festival: Musica Alta Ripa Plays Baroque (1695-1740)
Free (suggested donation: $20-$25, ages 18 & under free)
- Bernward Lohr, harpsichord
- Anna Röhrig, violin
- Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute
The twelfth annual 2023 Salish Sea Early Music Festival continues with this program of Baroque works, featuring musicians from the Hanover-based early music ensemble Musica Alta Ripa. Bernward Lohr (harpsichord, Hannover, Germany), Anna Röhrig (violin, Hannover, Germany), and Jeffrey Cohan (baroque flute) perform.
Salish Sea Early Music Festival will give nine performances of this program around the Puget Sound region, March 7-13; the 2023 Festival will consist of eight unique programs total, spanning January through June. Please see www.salishseafestival.org/ for more info.
About Bernward Lohr, harpsichord
The German conductor, harpsichordist, and music pedagogue Bernward Lohr studied at the Musikhochschule in Hannover with Professor Lajos Rovátkay (music education and harpsichord) and Würzburg with Professor Glen Wilson (historic keyboards), as well as at the Universität Hannover (German studies).
Bernward Lohr is one of the founding members of the 1984 founded ensembles Musica Alta Ripa, which focuses on the interpretation of the music of the 17th and 18th Centuries especially, and, with its challenging projects and their sophisticated design into one of the most respected early music ensembles. This ensemble is the center of his musical work.
As a harpsichordist of Musica Alta Ripa, Bernward Lohr participated in more than 30 CD productions, including Recordings of all concertos, flute, and violin sonatas of J.S. Bach. His recordings have earned, among others, the Cannes Classical Award and the Echo Klassik 1998 and 2004. As a member of the ensemble, he has performed all over the world (including tours in 2000 to the USA, the Middle East, Italy; in 2001 to Southeast Asia; in 2005 USA and Lithuania; traveling in summer 2010 with the ensemble to China). He he was awarded the Lower Saxony Music Prize of 2002.
Bernward Lohr deals with all genres and aspects of the music of the 17th and 18th Century. He is a harpsichordist and continuo player of the Hannoversche Hofkapelle. He works regularly with the conductor Jörg Straube, Frieder Bernius and Hermann Max.
In addition to designing the CD productions and concert programs of Musica Alta Ripa, opera projects form a focus of his work: In the 2002-2003 season Bernward Lohr directed a production of the opera Giasone by Francesco Cavalli at the Staatsoper in Hannover. In the fall of 2004, the co-operation with the Hannover Opera House Solche Wunder-Wercke!, A theatrical gala concert in honour of the 350th birthday of Agostino Steffani, the former Kapellmeister at the electoral court in Hannover was continued under his direction. In 2005, he performed La Calisto by F. Cavalli as an annual opera production at the Musikhochschule Hannover. In June 2006, he conducted a new version of Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen under the title Purcell in love - the Midsummer Night's Dream opera (version: Volker Hagedorn, director Aurelia Eggers) at the Festival in Herrenhausen. This production was again celebrated in June 2007 at its resumption enthusiastically by the audience. In 2008, under his direction, Orlando generoso, an opera which Agostino Steffani had composed in 1692 for the former opera house in Hanover again listed. A CD recording documents this production. In the summer of 2009, he directed the stage production of Agrippina by George Frideric Handel at the Musikhochschule.
Bernward Lohr teaches at the Musikhochschule Nürnberg as a lecturer for harpsichord, basso continuo, and chamber music. In February 2010, he was appointed Professor for early music at the Musikhochschule Hannover.
About Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute
Flutist Jeffrey Cohan, who the Boston Globe calls "The Flute Master," has performed in 25 countries throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and for the USIA Arts America Program in the South Pacific, South America, Turkey, and Portugal. 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 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. The only musician to have been awarded both the highest prize in the Concours Musica Antiqua in Bruges, Belgium and in the Erwin Bodky Competition in Boston, two of the most prestigious prizes for performers of early music on period instruments, he has premiered new music by many American and European composers. Jeffrey Cohan directs the Cascade Early Music Festival, the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival, and the Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival. The New York Times has heralded his ability to "play several superstar flutists one might name under the table."
https://www.jeffreycohan.com/