by Jarrett Hoffman
Both the music and the history of women composers are very much underexplored. So it’s fitting that Les Délices will begin its celebration of Women’s History Month with a new entry in their SalonEra series of performances and conversations — there will be plenty to hear, and plenty to learn.
Premiering online on Monday, March 15 at 7:30 pm, and remaining available for another 48 hours, “Women in Music” will feature instrumental and vocal works from the 17th-19th centuries by Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Maddalena Sirmen, and Clara Schumann. See the full program and register here. It’s free to watch, but a donation is suggested.
Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy, who is also the host of SalonEra, will be joined by harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, violinist Shelby Yamin, and soprano Michele Kennedy (above), who share a commitment to researching, performing, and recording music by women composers.
I reached Kennedy by telephone in Oakland, California to talk about the selections by three 17th-century Italian composers: Caccini, Strozzi, and Leonarda. We also discussed the societal restrictions on women of that era, and in some cases, the connections that helped these composers establish their careers. And we closed our phone call on the topics of equity and representation in classical music — particularly, Kennedy’s efforts to further that work while sheltering at home.
When Debra Nagy made the decision to reinvent her French Baroque ensemble Les Délices as a production company — whose interface with its subscribers would take the form of high-quality videos in the place of live concerts during the pandemic — many of us were curious to see how that would affect one of Cleveland’s cultural treasures.
Thursday’s program on Les Délices’ Concert Series is an interesting combination of imagination and circumstance: a creative recipe composed of recordings the ensemble had at hand in the fridge, or rather the archives.
Art often transcends without trying, remaining rooted in its specific regional, topical, or historical niche yet appealing well beyond. A humble central-German cantor became Bach, an observer of social posturing in a narrow slice of the gentry became Austen, an aerosol virtuoso known to tag lower-Manhattan walls became Basquiat.
Any talk show worth its weight possesses three qualities: a host who is knowledgeable of the subject matter, guests who are engaging conversationalists, and a feeling that by the end of the program, you’ve learned something.
There are a couple of reasons why “Bewitched” is a fitting title for the first program in Les Délices’ Concert Series, streaming Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 pm and available on demand until the Closing Reception on Monday, November 2, also at 7:30 — tickets available 
SalonEra is off and running, continuing into its fourth, fifth, and sixth episodes over the next several weeks with “Strike The Viol” (October 5), “Latin Baroque” (October 19), and “Schubertiade” (November 2).