The 2026 Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Annapolis is entitled "The Quality of Mercy" and celebrates our shared humanity through the musical depiction of experiences of conflict resolution and compassion. Featuring 17th and 18th-century chamber music performed by period instrument specialists from around the country and Canada, the festival’s three programs will present Italian music from Shakespeare’s time and works from 18th-century France and Germany by Marais, Corelli, j.S. Bach, Lully and others.
The festival opens with "These Distracted Times" on Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 7:00 PM with viola da gambist Susie Napper from Montreal, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright from Indiana and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan. The second program entitled "Chaconne pour la Paix" on Sunday, September 27, 2026 at 7:00 PM features pardessus de violist Melisande Corriveau from Montreal, viola da gambist Susie Napper, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan; and finally "The Quality of Mercy" on Wednesday, October 7 at 7:00 PM will feature baroque violinist Marlisa Woods, renaissance bassoonist Anna Marsh, renaissance flutist Jeffrey Cohan and baroque guitarist and theorbo player William Simms.
— THE QUALITY OF MERCY with Marlisa del Cid Woods, baroque violin, Anna Marsh, dulcian/renaissance bassoon, William Simms, baroque guitar and theorbo, and Jeffrey Cohan, renaissance flute
Shakespeare remarked that "The quality of mercy is not strain’d, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven" in "The Merchant of Venice", first performed in 1605. The Italian chamber music from this time to be included in this program for bassoon, transverse flute, violin and guitar was imbued with humanism's late 16th and early 17th century perspective that brought human emotion and individualism ever more poignantly into public consciousness in all the arts. Music embraced greater chromaticism and emotional palpability, leading to the unfolding of what we think of today as baroque style. Stunning and relatively unknown musical selections by Cima, Buonamente, Merula, Frescobaldi and others are to be performed on very rarely heard instruments.