by Mike Telin
“In many ways we’re long overdue for a collaboration, and I wanted to do something that neither group could do on their own,” Les Délices founder and artistic director Debra Nagy said by telephone. Quire Cleveland co-founder and artistic director Ross Duffin agrees. “This is a great opportunity for us to perform repertoire that otherwise would be very difficult to pull off,” he said during a separate interview.
On Friday, April 27 at 7:30 pm at St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills, the two groups will come together for the first performance of “Let the Heavens Rejoice,” a showcase of celebratory psalms for 22 voices and 14 instruments conducted by Scott Metcalfe and featuring tenor Owen McIntosh, baritone Jeffrey Strauss, and sopranos Elena Mullins and Sarah Coffman. The program will be repeated on Saturday, April 28 at 8:00 pm at Lakewood Congregational Church, and on Sunday, April 29 at 4:00 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Tickets are available online. A free open rehearsal will be held on Wednesday, April 25 from 7:00 pm until 10:00 pm at Plymouth Church.
Debra Nagy’s latest 
Debra Nagy and her colleagues of Les Délices usually dedicate themselves to bringing the music of 17th- and 18th-century France alive for modern ears. But this weekend, the period instrument ensemble will push the clock back to the 14th century — not an era of powdered wigs and salons, but a time of knights, crusades, courtly love, and increasing secularization.
The provocative title of Les Délices’ final program of the season alludes to two composers of the seventeenth-century: the “angelic” Marin Marais (read: pleasant and generous) and the “diabolical” Antoine Forqueray (read: self-centered and cantankerous). With all their differences, the angel and the devil can be strangely allied: both men were virtuosos on, and champions of the seven-string viol, the richly expressive bass instrument that characterizes much of early French baroque music.