This year’s Salish Sea Early Music Festival is drawing enough musicians from around the world that the event’s organizers have found themselves working overtime simply to secure visas for them all.

Flutist Jeffrey Cohan, who’s performed as a soloist in 25 countries, has been able to personally attest to the skills of a number of the musicians taking part in the eight-concert series, running from January through July.

“And the ones I don’t know, people whom I’ve worked with intimately, and I trust, have recommended those musicians,” Cohan said.

This international collection of musicians is performing chamber music on period instruments for a concert series that opened with four specialists performing on instruments from the Renaissance.

Among those musicians visiting the United States, Cohan expressed particular enthusiasm for award-winning harpsichordist Irene Roldán, born in southern Spain in 1997, and cellist and gambist Susie Napper, who’s spent decades recording, performing and teaching in Montreal and Copenhagen.

“We’ve worked with the Spanish consulate in Seattle to get Irene here,” Cohan said. “The talent we’re getting here is really the cream of the crop.”

The quartet of Vicki Boeckman, Tina Chancey, Cohan and Anna Marsh covered the Italian four-part canzona, which “blossomed in print” from 1577 through the early decades of the 1600s, on Sunday, Jan. 19.

The following concert on Sunday, Feb. 23, at 2 p.m. will cover the Baroque-era composition form known as the chaconne, with the Montreal-based Les Voix humaines, which includes Napper and Mélisande Corriveau, being joined by Cohan and harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright.

Cohan elaborated that Napper co-founded and directed the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, has acted as principal cellist with “many of the most important groups” in Europe and North America, and teaches at McGill University, the University of Montreal and the Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen. She also founded the Festival international Montréal Baroque, which has been presented since 2001.

Napper and Cohan return for the “Trio Sonata” concert on Sunday, March 6, at 2 p.m., with Bernward Lohr on harpsichord on Anne Röhrig on violin, to perform pieces by Georg Philipp Telemann, Louis-Gabriel Guillemain and Jean Baptiste Quentin le jeune.

Cohan is then set to be joined by Olena Zhukova on harpsichord, for a “European Tour” of 1690 to 1790 on Sunday, April 6, at 2 p.m., a concert which he described as “an excursion through a century of transformation and diversity, by decade and culture, within the baroque and classical periods, through the perspective of composers for harpsichord and flute,” from France, Italy, Scotland, Germany and Ukraine.

Cohan attributed the willingness of so many world-renowned musicians to perform at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, at 1020 Jefferson St. in Port Townsend, to how “uniquely supportive” audiences from Port Townsend and the surrounding community are of such artistic endeavors.

“We’ve had attendees come from as far away as Port Angeles for local concerts,” Cohan said.