[00:00:12] Hannah De Priest: Welcome to this special episode of the SalonEra Podcast. SalonEra is a series from Les Delices that brings together musicians from around the world to share music stories and scholarship. In this special episode, we'll hear excerpts from Les Delices' 15th anniversary season opener, The Pow'r of Musick, along with insights from artistic Director Debra Nagyl, Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble Artistic Director Arianne Abela and soprano Sherazade Panthaki.
The Pow'r of Musick was performed live in Cleveland, September 29 and 30th, 2023. Les Delices musicians were joined by vocal powerhouses from the Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, and the program was devised to take listeners on an artistic and spiritual journey with the music of English Baroque composer Henry Purcell framing contemporary works by Jonathan Woody, Brandon Waddles, Caroline Shaw and Sydney Guillaume. Though seemingly disparate, the through line in the program is the representation of music as something powerful, meaningful and bigger than ourselves. With nearly 20 musicians amassed on stage, this was a grand and thrilling way to open Les Delices' concert season. So what inspired this program?
Let's hear now from Artistic Director Debra Nagy.
I'm thrilled to now be speaking with Debra Nagy, of course, Les Delices' Artistic Director and founder. And this is a really exciting year for Les Delices. It is the 15th anniversary season. So, Debra, how does that feel?
[00:01:51] Debra Nagy: It's amazing. I can't believe on some level that we've made it to 15 years. And in another level, I am so proud and so grateful for the audiences who've encouraged and supported us along the way. And it's a real privilege to get to make music at the level that Les Delices makes music and also with the variety and quality of collaborators with whom we I get to work. So it's a real thrill. This was a great way to open the season, our 15th, and I'm so looking forward to what is ahead before.
[00:02:30] Hannah: We get to all the exciting things ahead for Les Delices. Take us back for a minute, 15 years and tell us what inspired you to start Les Delices.
[00:02:40] Debra: On one level, it was a little selfish. I found myself in Cleveland, I'd finished my doctorate, and I desperately wanted to establish a sense of artistic identity in the place where I lived. But I was also really interested in something bigger, if you will, and in particular, the opportunity to make an impact partially in my local community and definitely on the national scene.
I started Les Delices in a way, always with an interest in unusual programmings. I carved out a niche really clearly. I didn't want to be replicating what was happening in all sorts of other cities or other ensembles. And that sense of exploration and discovery and even risk taking has really carried us a long way.
[00:03:39] Hannah: It is fascinating to hear more about Les Delices' genesis. So now let's step forward in time. It's 15 years later, we're celebrating our 15th anniversary season and you are planning for The Pow'r of Musick. How does the power of Music fit into Les Delices' ethos around programming or your own priorities.
[00:04:04] Debra: When it comes to programming, I feel like Les Delices has grown very organically over time. And what I mean is that you build on every success and you learn from every experience.
And The Pow'r of Musick, in a way, really builds on the Winds of Change program that we produced in October of 2022, in which we featured music as well as the participation of Haitian composer Sydney Guillaume and worked with several choirs. That was a really important moment where we flanked a classical chamber music program with a work by a contemporary composer and including a commission.
[00:04:45] Hannah: Yes, Winds of Change is such a fantastic program, and any listeners who would like to learn more about it or hear some of the music from that program, you can find a podcast episode we did about it in this feed. If you just scroll back through wherever you're listening to this podcast. Debra, I'd love to talk now about this collaboration with Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble.
[00:05:07] Debra: Well, Les Delices and myself personally has worked frequently and with great success with many of the individuals who comprise Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble. You'll remember also from our podcast and concert series last spring, we collaborated with Sherry Panthaki, we've worked with Jonathan Woody was one of their baritones, and I've worked with many Michele Kennedy soprano, who we'll hear in this episode as well, has contributed to SalonEra. So in a way, it was like gathering family and an incredible opportunity, like I said, to build on some of the work that we did in October of 2022, incorporating new music into a program of old music and having the opportunity to work with really high quality vocalists. The other thing that I just wanted to say about the Pow'r of Musick as a program and how that came about was that I just thought, if you have this milestone anniversary year, how better to celebrate than by celebrating music itself? And that was really what inspired, in particular, the inclusion of the, you know, flanking this program with music that celebrated the patron saint of music herself, Saint Cecilia.
[00:06:37] Hannah: We'll return to our interview with Debra in a minute, but let's now listen to the opening symphony and chorus from Henry Purcell's Welcome to all the Pleasures, composed in 1683 in honor of St. Cecilia and recorded live by Les Delices and Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble in September 2023.
[00:11:16] Hannah: You know, it's a little crazy to think about, but Henry Purcell was this man, this composer. He lived over 300 years ago, but he remains so beloved and considered by many, myself included, to be one of the greatest English composers who ever lived. And Debra, I wonder if you could talk to us a bit about his enduring appeal and what qualities welcome to all the Pleasures has that makes it so fun and so joyful to listen to.
[00:11:44] Debra: Right, so Welcome To All The Pleasures is actually the very first of all of Purcell's, and I actually believe in English tradition celebration pieces for St Cecilia. It's from 1683, and it was so popular, it was such a success, that actually they planned an annual festival for St Cecilia every year after that until about 1700, which is why we have all these St Cecilia pieces. But it all starts with this one.
And it's interesting as time goes on and we hear at the end of this episode and at the end of our program, hail bright Cecilia. By the end for Purcell, that's almost ten years later. Hail Bright Cecilia is bright and it's big and the whole scale of it is huge. But with Welcome To All The Pleasures, it's very intimate and it doesn't start with some big birthday song. It starts with an E minor symphony that is sort of more from the consort tradition. It's a little retrospective, it's mystical in quality. And then there's this fantastic super rhetorical welcome and three different voices to which a choir answers. Purcel is always full of surprises, harmonically and otherwise, and fantastic text painting. There's a repetition of the text, of the arc of universal harmony. I also, with this Pow'r of Musick program, wanted to have this sense of the universality of artistic appreciation, and I think that summed up really beautifully in the text and in the musical setting.
Hannah: So we've got one more selection from welcome to all the Pleasures. I'm really excited to play Debra, can you tell us more about what we're about to hear?
Debra: So what we're going to hear is actually a tenor solo that precedes the final movement of welcome To All The Pleasures, which is a chorus called In A Consort Of Voices.
And that tenor solo is called "Beauty Thou Scene of Love". It's very beguiling, but Purcell is always, like, adding what we might think of today as blue notes, some unexpected harmony, even in something that is so sweet and Purcell always injects something utterly beautiful and surprising into it. And in "A Concert of Voices", there's this sort of, like, build up about from going from solo to the collective. It also does not end loud. It ends like a sort of farewell symphony, with echoes. And you can just imagine that these are like basically the heavens resounding or bells continuing to vibrate in the atmosphere. And the idea of the music of the spheres and celestial harmony is baked into the text, as well as the philosophy behind these pieces and the sort of legacy and cult of Cecilia. So it's so, so, so neat. You will love it.
[00:15:09] Hannah: Well, with that ringing endorsement, let's listen now to Beauty Thou Scene of Love into the chorus "In a Consort of Voices" from Purcell's Welcome to all the Pleasures. The tenor soloist you'll hear in this recording is Haitham Haidar of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble.
[00:19:10] Ad: Les Delices announces the release of two new CDs this November. If you're in Northeast Ohio, you can join us November 3 through five for several free and ticketed events marking the release of The Highland Lassie, a Scottish Baroque program, and Noel Noel, a gorgeously recorded disc of holiday favorites. Or be sure to catch our upcoming podcast episode spotlighting The Highland Lassie that drops on November 27. Visit lesdelices.org for details.
[00:19:40] Hannah: Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble is a group of professional singers from around the United States who have thriving national and international solo careers, a love of vocal chamber music, and who focus primarily on early and new music. The ensemble presents vocal music with artistic excellence while celebrating racial, ethnic and gender diversity, with a special focus on creative educational outreach and partnerships with schools. We were thrilled to bring KVE to Cleveland for the first time with this project.
To learn more about KVE's history, mission and goals, Debra Nagy sat down with their artistic director and founder, Arianne Abela. Let's listen.
[00:20:20] Debra: Welcome, Arianne. It's so great to have you in Cleveland.
[00:20:23] Arianne Abela: Thanks for having me.
[00:20:25] Debra: Can you tell me what you do and what your role is with Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble?
[00:20:31] Arianne: Sure. I am artistic director and co founder of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble. We began in 2019 and have been going strong even through the pandemic. And yeah, I'm happy to be here.
[00:20:45] Debra: How did you come to found KBE?
[00:20:48] Arianne: Sherry Panthaki, our Soprano, we were in grad school together at Yale many years ago, and we had always had the conversation about not just the early music scene, but generally the classical music scene overall and how it didn't feel like there was enough inclusion and diversity and representation in our field. And we had dreamed about creating an ensemble that would focus on that and would be a way to show the youth of this world that it's okay to take part in this beautiful scene.
Finally, just many, many years later, we finally had the means to put together this ensemble. And many people in the group are friends from that era of school and beyond. So it's just been really exciting for us to actually bring our dreams into fruition.
[00:21:53] Debra: What would you say is perhaps a particularly memorable moment from your history with a group?
[00:22:03] Arianne: I think one of our favorite moments was the first time we sang together because it felt like everyone had a place in a home and could offer ideas without feeling self conscious or worried or embarrassed or like they didn't have a place. Everyone felt like this was a very different group. We call ourselves family all the time. Because it just feels like when one person's not there, it feels like a sibling is missing from that reunion. And so it really has come to mean a lot to us. But I would also say that our interactions with students have been really fulfilling.
The Morse Chorale, those students were really inspired. They're young musicians, high school and younger, and they have continued to be connected to our ensemble. And those students were really inspired by seeing people that looked like them singing on stage. And I think that's what we want to do. We want to show those young folks that they can do it as well. And that was really meaningful, I think.
[00:23:20] Debra: Yeah. And the Morse Chorale, that is a youth choir in New Haven, Connecticut.
[00:23:26] Arianne: It's in New Haven. It's part of the Music in the Schools initiative at Yale. But they are all students from all over New Haven that come together and sing.
And this just was really exciting for them, I think, and for us to collaborate with them. And we've continued this relationship with them through the years.
[00:23:44] Debra: Yeah. What is your hope for Kaleidoscope? What do you think the ensemble could or should be doing three, five plus years from now? And what even may it look or.
[00:23:58] Arianne: Sound like the biggest hurdle that I am facing at the moment is that we can't reach all the communities that we could be reaching because of financial barriers. Right. It's always that way. And it's so unfortunate because the people who need to see us and need to have us in their communities can't afford to bring us. So that's the problem. So I think once we can get to a place where money isn't a problem, then we can where is that? Someone tell me. I think then we could actually go anywhere and really be in places of need. But until then, we do the best we can in every place we go to. But I always want a little bit more of that.
[00:24:49] Debra: Yeah, absolutely. It has been great to have Kaleidoscope in Cleveland and we also tried to do some of that outreach and extra work in schools a few days before the full ensemble arrived. And I was glad that Kaleidoscope was able to go into one of our public schools in Cleveland just yesterday. It's been really great to work with this really all star team of singers who does consider themselves family. Honestly, it's great to feel, for a small short time, a part of that as well. So I wonder if you could speak to a little bit to the value of collaboration and how collaboration has worked.
[00:25:39] Arianne: Oh, gosh. I think you said you feel like you're part of the family for just a short time, but I think you're now part of our family forever, positively and negatively. You know how families are. But I think that's what we embrace is that collaboration for us is so special and we like to hold on to those relationships and hope for more. I've always been so fond of creating music with people in that collaborative sense. Nobody has dictatorship over the art that we make. We make it together and everybody is part of that.
What's also really amazing is that we create the art now and many years later, if we were to do again, it would be so different, and it's just always changing and flowing. So I think it's just so important to us to reach people. I mean, that's why I do music at least, is because of those connections and the people that we meet and hold on to.
[00:26:43] Debra: Thank you so much, Arianne, it's been great to chat with you.
[00:26:46] Arianne: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:26:50] Hannah: As Debra mentioned earlier, The Pow’r of Musick framed modern works with Purcell’s anthems in honor of St. Cecilia. Included among the pieces by living composers was Pulitzer-prize winner Caroline Shaw’s rapturous And the swallow. Based on Psalm 84, the work responds to the Syrian refugee crisis. Shaw described the message of the work as QUOTE “‘There’s a yearning for a home that feels very relevant today. The second verse is: “The sparrow found a house and the swallow a nest, where she may place her young,” which is just a beautiful image of a bird trying to keep her children safe–people to keep their family safe.” Let’s listen to Shaw’s And the swallow, performed live by members of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble:
[00:31:50] Speaker A: SalonEra fans might recognize the name Sherezade Panthaki. An acclaimed soprano and veritable early music super star, Sherry has been a guest several times over and featured prominently in our podcast episode on last season’s Enchanted Island, a program of French baroque cantatas that marked her debut with Les Delices. We were so happy to have Sherry back in Cleveland in September, this time as part of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble. She’s a founding member of the group and it’s become a really important part of her life, as she explained during a recent interview:
[00:32:22] Sherezade Panthaki: Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble is a group that was founded by myself and my colleague Arianne Abela, who is the director of choral Activities at Amherst College. We were at Yale together and I am originally from India. I was born and raised there. Arianne is from the Philippines and we got to talking about how we were often the only people of color in a room full of classical musicians. We both love classical music so much. We came to it despite the fact that it's not necessarily native to our culture. And yet it spoke to us both so deeply, even as children and certainly as adults. And we started having conversations about how important it was to make everyone feel like they had a place at the table when it came to early music and classical music and new music.
And we were fortunate enough as well to have some colleagues by that point, friends and colleagues of ours who were folks of color from different races, different nationalities. And we just thought, wouldn't it be amazing if a group of singers who are at the highest of artistic levels walked onto a stage and just made this incredible visual and oral statement of what diversity in classical music could look like and should look like and how excellence and diversity go hand in hand? As Arianne and I talked about establishing the group, we were clear that one of the goals of the group, a very strong goal of the group, would be an education component that, yes, we are performers and we would make music at the highest possible artistic level, but that we have a duty and a calling even for folks that want to enter this field. And we wanted to be a part of that. So we established pretty quickly that we would do educational programs in almost every performance visit that we do. We make sure that we have some kind of artistic component. Sometimes that means it's a masterclass, sometimes that means, as we did in Cleveland, it's a visit to an arts school that was a middle school in this case, and we are really ready to answer some really tough questions. We've had questions from students that are high school students saying, why should I care about this music? Or how do you reconcile performing music that has traditionally not been open to other cultures, or where other cultures have felt that there was some sort of closed door or barriers or gatekeepers that have traditionally not been of color? And so we really are very open to talking about all of these complex issues in detail. And we have such a wealth of knowledge and experience and really sort of different backgrounds from everybody in Kaleidoscope. And I think I know just for myself, that every time we have one of these discussions, I personally come away just feeling so fulfilled and so sort of energized about knowing more about my fellow colleagues and hearing their perspective on various things.
[00:35:57] Hannah: Yeah, I feel like especially with children, when you create opportunities for people to really ask whatever they want to ask, you can so quickly kind of sink into a much deeper conversation than you would meeting your colleagues on a gig for a week. That's not the kind of situation where you necessarily get to that sort of level of intimacy, where you feel like there's a mutual understanding and a trust. So that's so beautiful that you have that with your colleagues at Kaleidoscope. I know that the group has an early music kind of bent because of the kind of general makeup of the group, but you also do a lot of new music. And what I think is a really beautiful example of kind of both of those priorities coming together is this beautiful new arrangement of Henry Purcell's Evening Hymn that you really wanted included on this program. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the composer who arranged it and why you love it so much before we hear it.
[00:36:58] Sherezade: Yes, absolutely. So I love Evening hymn. It's one of the first personal pieces that I learned as a student and it's just grown with me as I've grown as a performer. And truly, it's one of the pieces I just love singing so much. It's not a piece that I would say is a particularly flashy piece or a virtuosic piece. It's in fact a very contemplative and quiet piece, but there's so much beauty in it and there's so much internal phrasing to be found from it. And I just kind of delight in the joy of thinking, of new ways to bring it to life. Wouldn't it just if what if I reach out to Sebastian, my wonderful friend and colleague, and see if I could commission him to write an arrangement for me with strings and he was so ready for the challenge. I think it's lovely. He sent us an arrangement that was for soprano and strings and also one for soprano, strings and chorus, in case we wanted to include the singers of Kaleidoscope. And that's the arrangement we ended up doing. It absolutely respects the spirit, the original spirit of the piece, but I love having this new layer of harmony, of texture.
[00:38:19] Hannah: Let's give a listen now to this wonderful new arrangement by Sebastian Gottschick of Purcell's An Evening Hymn, sung by Sherry Panthaki at The Pow'r of Musick:
[00:44:10] Ad: Henry VI's flagship, The Mary Rose, sank in 1545 with a chest full of instruments on board.Tune in on November 13 as we premiere Shipwreck, where we'll dig deep into reconstructing the sights and sounds aboard The Mary Rose. We'll talk with Polymaths, Alison Monroe and Peter Walker, who help tell the Ship's story through music alongside featured performances from Medieval ensemble Trobar.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: This is such an exciting time for Les Delices and SalonEra. We are kicking off our fourth season of free, accessible early-music focused episodes of SalonEra while Les Delices is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary season. Thanks so much for being part of our global community of music lovers. With your support, we can continue to collaborate with such engaging guests from across the country and around the world. You can support SalonEra by subscribing to this podcast and by donating at salonera.org. Your donations make every episode possible! Thanks again for supporting Les Délices and SalonEra by listening and subscribing to this podcast. We’re going to hear some more Purcell now, from his anthem Hail! Bright Cecilia, composed just before Purcell’s death in 1692. As its title suggests, it is another ode to St. Cecilia, patron saint of music. Its text by Nicholas Brady makes explicit references to her “celestial art,” and to the harmony of the spheres. In the movement we’re about to hear, you’ll notice the sweet, earthy sounds of two oboes in parallel thirds and sixths supporting the vocal line, “Thou tuned’st this world,” by soprano Michele Kennedy and answered by the full chorus:
[00:48:40] Hannah: Let's return to our interview with Debra Nagy to hear more about Les Delices' plans for its 15th anniversary season.
[00:48:47] Debra: Well, at the top of this episode, I said that Les Delices has grown really organically over the last 15 years and we have at different times, been incredibly ambitious with what we have produced in terms of programming. And I think the 15th anniversary campaign is an important and timely moment for us to consider how to best support Les Delices' future. We are aiming to raise a total of $200,000 over the next three years.
That's above and beyond our normal operating expenses or our normal kind of annual fund and general fundraising. And that $200,000 will essentially be evenly split between supporting Les Delices' organizational capacity. And the other half of that $200,000 campaign will be to support innovative programming, which will take several forms a multi-year commissioning project called the Mythology Project, as well as really deepen our educational programming in the Cleveland area and beyond with the hiring of an artist educator.
[00:50:07] Hannah: As you can hear, big plans ahead for Les Delices. If you would like to learn more about the 15th Anniversary Campaign and how to direct a special gift, our Executive Director Laura Potter would love to hear from you. You can email her at
[email protected] or leave a voice message at 216-302-8404. Thanks again for listening - hope you’ve enjoyed this episode! We’re going to finish up our podcast with the final movement of Hail Bright Cecilia, “Soul of the world”:
[00:53:08] Ad: Have you listened to Les Delices' other podcast, Music Meditations? Music Meditations combines poetry and music to bring soul, soothing and life affirming art into your day. Featuring classic and contemporary poetry by Northeast Ohio writers, along with curated performances from Les Delices' Live Performance archives. Each bite sized episode concludes with prompts for mindfulness or guided listening to Listen search Music Meditations wherever you found this podcast.
[00:53:51] Hannah: Thanks so much for listening to this special episode of SalonEra! Support for SalonEra is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Ohio Arts Council, Early Music America, and audience members like you. Special thanks to our program sponsor for The Pow’r of Musick, Astri Seidenfeld, and to SalonEra Season Sponsors Deborah Malamud, Tom and Marilyn McLaughlin, Greg Nosan and Brandon Ruud, and Joseph Sopko & Betsy Macintyre. This episode was created by Executive Producer Debra Nagy, Associate Producer Shelby Yamin, and me, Hannah De Priest, script writer, episode host, and Les Délices special projects manager.
This episode featured selections from The Pow’r of Music, recorded live at performances in September 2023. You heard vocalists from Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble: Arianne Abela, Michele Kennedy, Sherezade Panthaki, Laura Mercado-Wright, Michael Walker, Haitham Haidar, Noah Horn, Brandon Waddles, and Jonathan Woody and Les Délices musicians Debra Nagy and Gaia Saetermoe-Howard, oboe & recorder, Shelby Yamin and Caitlin Hedges, violin, Jonathan Goya, viola and violin, Rebecca Landell Reed, cello, Sue Yelanjian, violone, and Mark Edwards, organ.
To support this podcast, visit salonera.org. Hit the subscribe button to be notified when our next episode, Shipwreck!, is released on November 13th.
