Like chamber music? Heed Orcas Island's enticing call

Small is beautiful — at least when we're talking about Orcas Island. The scenic island, reached via the San Juan Islands ferry from Anacortes, hosts the ninth season of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival through next weekend, with a lineup of music tempting enough to draw Seattle-area visitors northward.

This weekend represents the festival at its most venturesome, with a program called "Rhapsodies and a Rock Star." Michael Daugherty's "Dead Elvis" (featuring a bassoon impersonating The King) appears alongside a most intriguing version of Stravinsky's classic "A Soldier's Tale," for seven instruments, three narrators and two dancers. Appearing in the two concerts (of the same repertoire), at 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, will be narrators John Clancy, John Friedmann and Owen Kotler; the dancers are Benjamin Pierce and Muriel Maffre — the same San Francisco Ballet principals who thrilled 2004 audiences with another Stravinsky work, "The Rite of Spring."

Sonatas by Poulenc and Mozart, plus Loeffler "Rhapsodies" for oboe, viola and piano, round out the program.

There's also a 2 p.m. Family Concert on Sunday. On Tuesday (at 7:30 p.m.) and Wednesday (at the more unusual hour of 5 p.m.) comes a pair of eagerly awaited recitals by Grammy-winning cellist Lynn Harrell and pianist Jon Kimura Parker, playing a dream program of Schubert's "Arpeggione" Sonata, Beethoven's "Magic Flute" Variations and the Brahms F Major Cello Sonata.

The festival shifts gears on Thursday, when Harrell (who won a Grammy for his recording of the Tchaikovsky Trio in 1981) plays this work with violinist Helen Nightengale and Parker. Also on the program: Mozart's Piano Quartet in E-Flat, with those three artists joined by festival artistic director Aloysia Friedmann. (That 7:30 p.m. concert is repeated next Friday as the last concert in the festival.)

The concerts are preceded by 6:30 preconcert discussions. Tickets are always in short supply because the Orcas Center is tiny and the festival is well-loved. Try the Orcas Center ticket office, 360-376-2281.

Classical-music previews

The baroque era produced a treasure trove of operas that are seldom performed today, but Seattle's Early Music Guild has been slowly reversing that trend in recent years with two very well-received productions of early operas by Claudio Monteverdi and John Blow.

Now the Guild's "Accademia d'Amore" Baroque Opera Workshop will offer still more early opera, with scenes and selections from a variety of works performed by students at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Performances take place in the E.E. Bach Theatre in Seattle Pacific University's McKinley Hall (3307 Third Ave. W.). You'll find tickets at 206-325-7066 or www.earlymusicguild.org. The two programs feature different repertoire, singers and instrumentalists.

The workshop is led by Seattle's Stephen Stubbs, an internationally known lutenist formerly based in northern Germany. The faculty includes British stage director Roger Hyams, Nancy Zylstra (voice), Anna Mansbridge and Theodore Deacon (stage direction), Maxine Eilander (historical harp and continuo), Jillon Stoppels Dupree and George Shangrow (harpsichord and vocal coaching), and Margriet Tindemans (baroque strings).

The Annas Bay Music Festival, a new and ambitious undertaking, will feature noted operatic baritone Robert Orth (who was earlier one of Seattle Opera's "Artists of the Year") in an opening concert at 8 p.m. Wednesday. It's a program of American song, with singer Kathryn Weld and pianist/composer Bern Herbolsheimer. Orth also is heard in an 8 p.m. Thursday program called "Opera à la Carte." That program will be repeated Sept. 4 and 9. The festival takes place in Union at the Harmony Hill Retreat Center, inside the Elmer and Katharine Nordstrom Great Hall (which seats 125-170, depending on the configuration). For tickets, visit the Web site, www.annasbay.org.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com