The fifth 2017 Salish Sea Early Music Festival performance, “The Art of Modulation,” features innovative baroque chamber music for flute, two violins and harpsichord featuring “The Art of Modulation,” by François-André Danican Philidor on Thursday, April 13, at 7 p.m. at the Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church, with flutist Jeffrey Cohan playing the baroque one-keyed flute, Linda Melsted on baroque violin, Romaric Pokorny on baroque violin and Jonathan Oddie on harpsichord.

François-André Danican Philidor (1726-1795), the son of Louis XIV’s celebrated music librarian, was world chess champion for almost five decades, from 1747 to 1795. Philidor composed the six Sinfonias comprising “The Art of Modulation” in 1755 not purely to demonstrate technical prowess, as in Berlin in 1751 when he simultaneously played 3three chess games blindfolded and won them all, but to explore the art of transitioning between musical tonalities and expressive colors and developing new modes of musical expression. Philidor builds an intense, pure harmonic environment that twists and modulates, transporting and astonishing the listener. Philidor was known primarily as a composer of opéra comique, and “The Art of Modulation” is his major surviving instrumental work.

Three Sinfonias from Philidor’s work will be complemented with music from Italy and Germany: concerti for flute and strings by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Georg Philipp Telemann, in the continuance of the festivities for Telemann’s 250th anniversary.