01 Mar Preview: La Diosa
Les Delices brings classical music to new communities in Cleveland
READ THE FULL ARTICLE FOR CLEVELAND.COM BY ZACHARY LEWIS
Classical music is for everyone, but an upcoming program by Les Delices is for one particular demographic a little more than most: Cleveland’s Hispanic community.
With “La Diosa,” which runs Feb. 26-March 1, Les Delices is veering boldly from its comfort zone, Baroque-era France, into very different territory, the music of 17th– and 18th-century Latin America.
In doing so, its aim is not only to inspire existing patrons but also to create new ones, to transcend barriers and help listeners from non-European traditions better understand and appreciate the music of their homeland’s past.
“History is not a line forward,” said violinist Liz Loayza Herrera, a native of Bolivia and a lead participant in “La Diosa” (“The Goddess”). “It is not a dead archive. We are woven together in so many ways.”
Debra Nagy, the oboe-playing founder of Les Delices (pronounced “Lay Day-Lease”), a Cleveland-based Baroque chamber music group, has a penchant for thematic programming, for putting together concerts that bear out a certain concept, style, or message.
In the case of “La Diosa,” however, part of the group’s ongoing, multi-year “Mythology Project,” Nagy started with a person. Eager to truly connect with her Hispanic neighbors, she began by tapping Estelí Gomez, an acclaimed soprano of Mexican heritage, who she said would help her design a program in an authentic manner.
“That felt important to me, to not impose an idea,” Nagy said. “I wanted this to be a collaborative creation, for others to bring something of themselves to the table.”
That they did, in spades. With the help of Gomez, Herrera and others, the group researched, amassed and prepared a truly vibrant collection of music conceived for the cathedrals, missions, and courts of modern-day Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala. The pieces they found call for combinations of two violins, viola, cello, recorder, harpsichord, guitar and percussion.