LES DÉLICES - 2024
LES DÉLICES - Nov. 8, 2024
Les Délices (pronounced Lay day-lease) delights, inspires, educates, and expands audiences for music on period instruments through innovative programming and world class performances. Founded by baroque oboist Debra Nagy in 2009, Les Délices has established a reputation for unique programs that “can’t help but get one listening and thinking in fresh ways” (San Francisco Classical Voice). The New York Times observed that “Concerts and recordings by Les Délices are journeys of discovery” while UK Classical Source added, “The centuries roll away when the members of Les Délices bring this long-existing music to communicative and sparkling life.”
Les Délices made its New York debut before a sold-out audience at the Frick Collection in May 2010. Recent and upcoming performances for the ensemble include Music Before 1800 (New York City), the Boston Early Music Festival, Da Camera Society (Los Angeles), Houston Early Music Society, Early Music Hawaii, Morrison Chamber Music Center at San Francisco State University, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, San Francisco Early Music Society, the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, and Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. In addition to touring engagements, Les Délices presents its own annual four-concert series in Northeast Ohio. Les Délices has been featured on WCPN, WCLV and WKSU in Ohio, WQXR in New York, and NPR’s syndicated Harmonia and Sunday Baroque. Their debut CD was featured as part of the Audio guide for a special exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Watteau, Music, and Theater).
Debra Nagy will bring Boise a special touring program called “Arcadian Dreams,” with music of the High Baroque, including a Scarlatti harpsichord sonata, an ensemble (baroque oboe feature) of Corelli’s La Folia, and a small bevy of French cantatas (Rameau, Lefebvre, and Bourgeois) with soprano Hannah De Priest, “a fearless performer of a wide range of lyric soprano repertoire.” Hailed a “breakout artist” (Boston Globe) with “a voice that is theater itself” (Classique News), recent credits include her Kennedy Center debut (Opera Lafayette, La serva padrona), European debut at the Innsbruck Early Music Festival, and multiple productions with Boston Early Music Festival.
