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Seán Dagher’s sea shanties return for Les Délices “The Mermaid”

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by Stephanie Manning

Sea shanties might make you think of the ocean, not Lake Erie. But the freshwater ships that sailed the Great Lakes in the 19th century held a rich musical tradition of their own. So when Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy found a song that mentioned Cleveland in the book Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors, she knew the group had to perform it.

“ When I was learning it, I really fell in love with the tune,” said Seán Dagher, a shanty singer and guest performer with Les Délices. The lyrics of “Red Iron Ore” tell the tale of a ship setting out from Cleveland to pick up some of the ore before returning home. “ Debra found a different set of lyrics and melody than people usually sing. So it’s nice to come up with something new with old source material.”

After his special appearances with the group in March, Dagher returns to Cleveland next week for a regular season program with Les Délices “The Mermaid,” a family-friendly concert combining classical and folk traditions, visits Akron on April 25, Cleveland Heights on April 26, and Rocky River on April 27. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

Les Délices: music fosters meaningful conversation at Cleveland’s VA Medical Center (Feb. 21)

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by Stephanie Manning

Navigating dementia — a common, yet devastating part of aging — requires confronting all sorts of complex emotions. People with memory loss, their caregivers, and the medical teams who interact with them all understand this well. So when Les Délices commissioned a piece tackling this difficult topic, they made a special effort to bring the music to those who would resonate with it the most.

The Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center hosted the early music ensemble for two performance-discussion sessions on February 21, a moving and emotional afternoon of empathetic, honest conversations about memory loss all framed by the solace of music.

At 12:00 pm, medical professionals and providers gathered in the rec hall, where flags of the U.S., the Department of VA, and the military’s many branches now provided a backdrop to a harpsichord and a collection of music stands. As part of the “Bioethics at Noon” series, the Les Délices musicians performed François Couperin’s La Visionnaire and selections from Viet Cuong’s world premiere, A Moment’s Oblivion. [Read more…]

Les Délices contemplates what makes us human in “A Moment’s Oblivion” (Feb. 23)

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by Stephanie Manning

“How wretched to forget,” sings the son in A Moment’s Oblivion — a character whose father now struggles to recognize members of his own family. “For all we were forms who we are.”

But the miracle cure that restores his father’s memory turns out to be a more fraught solution than it appears. Such is the conflict at the heart of Les Délices’ recent commission, with music by Viet Cuong and libretto by Cleveland poet Dave Lucas. The early music ensemble’s latest program surrounded the world premiere of A Moment’s Oblivion with more musical opportunities to reflect on the complex, and sometimes contradictory, emotions that make us human. [Read more…]

Les Délices unveils “The Mythology Project”

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By Mike Telin

When Debra Nagy asked Nicholas Phan to think about a non-Western, specifically non-European, myth that could be a fit for Les Délices’ The Mythology Project, he knew exactly where to turn.

“I had been spending a lot of time in Ann Arbor at my parents’ place because their health was starting to decline. And in my childhood bedroom was this very tattered book of Chinese myths that I had as a child,” the Grammy-winning tenor said on a recent Zoom call from Lisbon, Portugal.

“So I thumbed through the book and “The Loss of Memory Myth” jumped out at me. Probably because of what I had been experiencing with my parents’ decline in health and my needing to step up to take care of them. That role reversal really spoke to me.”

This weekend Les Délices will present A Moment’s Oblivion, the first instalment of “The Mythology Project,” a three-year initiative that will bring new life to the secular cantata that was popular in 17th and 18th-century France.

On Saturday at 4:00 pm at Heights Theater and Sunday at 4:00 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, tenor Nicholas Phan, oboist Debra Nagy, violinist Shelby Yamin, violist da gamba Rebecca Landell, and harpsichordist Mark Edwards will perform Michel de Montéclair’s La Bergère & Le Dépit généreux, Marin Marais’ “Le Labyrinthe” from Livre 4ème, and François Couperin’s “Barricades mistérieuses” and “Les Langueurs tendres” from Sixième Ordre. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Les Délices visits 14th Century Avant-garde at Pivot Center (Nov. 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

As the historian Barbara Tuchman revealed in her book A Distant Mirror, the 14th century in Europe was both eventful and full of contradictions.

On the traumatic side, the Great Famine and the bubonic plague claimed a great swath of the population, the Hundred Years’ War raged, and the  papacy moved from Rome to Avignon in France, marking the beginning of the decline in influence of the Catholic Church.

On the positive side came the flowering of experiments in music, a subject that Debra Nagy and her Les Délices colleagues charmingly explored in their “14th Century Avant-garde” program on Saturday, November 23 at the Pivot Center on Cleveland’s West Side, a converted 1919 building once used for making ships’ sails and awnings. [Read more…]

Les Délices explores music of the 14th Century Avant-garde

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by Mike Telin

“My heart always comes back to Medieval music — it’s just so beautiful,” Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy said during a telephone conversation. “This wonderful program is full of my favorite pieces from that repertoire.”

On Friday, November 22 at 7:30 pm at First Congregational Church in Hudson, Les Délices will present “14th Century Avant-garde.” The evening features music by Guillaume de Machaut, Jacob Senleches, and Johannes Suzoy performed by mezzo-soprano Sophie Michaux, tenor James Reese, Scott Metcalfe (vielle & gothic harp), and Debra Nagy (recorders, douçaines, harp, and voice).

The program will be repeated on Saturday, November 23 at 7:30pm at Inlet Dance Theater in Cleveland and Sunday, November 24 at 4:00pm at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Les Délices conjures Arcadia in high quality (Oct. 20)

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by Stephanie Manning

Arcadia: that mythological Eden, that utopian natural paradise. The members of Italy’s Arcadian Academy, established in the late 17th century, aimed to replicate that pastoral life via the arts. And on October 20, Les Délices sought to do the same, by performing the music of composers from the Academy and beyond.

“Arcadian Dreams,” a program featuring soprano Hannah De Priest, gave the Harkness Chapel audience a taste of the early music group’s next recording. In fact, the musicians were gearing up to get in the studio the very next day — and they delivered a suitably high-quality performance in the process. [Read more…]

Les Délices to unveil “Arcadian Dreams”

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by Mike Telin

For their latest performance and recording project, Les Délices has turned to the bucolic paradise of Arcadia — a place of pastoral perfection where nature and humanity are in perfect balance  — for inspiration.

“Arcadian Dreams” features works for soprano and chamber ensemble by Jean-Philippe Rameau and a young Georg Frederic Handel, rarely-performed pieces by Louis Lefebvre and Thomas Louis Bourgeois, and music by Arcangelo Corelli and Domenico Scarlatti.

The premiere performances are on Saturday, October 19 at 2:00 pm at the Hudson Library & Historical Society — click here for a seating reservation — and Sunday, October 20 at 7:30 pm at Harkness Chapel. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Les Délices oboist and artistic director Debra Nagy and soprano Hannah De Priest by Zoom. I began by asking them how the project came about.

[Read more…]

Les Délices makes magic in “Moonlit Mozart” (Oct. 5)

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by Peter Feher

There were no sets, costumes, or actors in sight when the strains of Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute started up at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights on Saturday, October 5. Yet Les Délices, the enterprising and adaptable period-instrument ensemble led by oboist and artistic director Debra Nagy, was putting on a serious production all the same.

Eight specialist wind players had come together for “Moonlit Mozart,” the first concerts of Les Délices’ 2024-25 season. (Two additional performances, in Akron on October 3 and in Rocky River on October 6, filled out the weekend.)

“This is a bucket-list program for me,” Nagy explained from the stage, detailing the reasons why this once-standard combination of instruments is so rarely heard today. [Read more…]

Les Délices opens its season with “Moonlit Mozart” Serenades

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by Mike Telin

It’s delightful to read that Wolfgang Amadè Mozart, whose music has charmed so many ears, could surprise and charm himself. He wrote in a letter to his father from Vienna on his name-day, November 3, 1781:

“At eleven o’clock at night I was treated to a serenade performed by two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons — and that of my own composition. These musicians asked that the street door might be opened and, placing themselves in the center of the courtyard, surprised me, just as I was about to undress, in the most pleasant fashion imaginable with the first chord in E-flat.”

This week, Les Délices will open their season with “Moonlit Mozart.” Oboists Debra Nagy and Kathryn Montoya, clarinetists Eric Hoeprich and Madison Vienna, bassoonists Stephanie Corwin and Clay Zeller-Townson, hornists Nathanael Udell and Sadie Glass, and double bassist Sue Yelanjian will perform selections from The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, the Adagio from the Serenade in E-flat, K. 375, and the Serenade in C minor, K 388.

[Read more…]

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