Les Délices

“A baroque oboist of consummate taste and expressivity” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) with a musical approach that’s “distinctly sensual … pliant, warm, and sweet,” (New York Times), Debra Nagy, director, is one of North America’s leading performers on the baroque oboe.  In addition to her work with Les Délices, Debra plays principal oboe with Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society, Apollo’s Fire, and many other ensembles. She also indulges her love of late medieval music as a regular collaborator with Boston’s Blue Heron. Debra is inspired by a creative process that brings together research, composition in historical styles, improvisation, and artistic collaboration. Highlights of her recent projects include a critically acclaimed multimedia production of Machaut’s medieval masterpiece Remede de Fortune, a Baroque-Jazz crossover program called Songs without Words, and ​​The White Cat, a pastiche Baroque opera for singers and chamber ensemble with puppetry and projections based on the Countess D’Aulnoy’s 1690s feminist fairytale. In the pandemic, Debra reimagined Les Délices’ concert series for the virtual space and created a web series variety show for early music called SalonEra.

Emi Ferguson can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including the Handel & Haydn Society, AMOC, the New York New Music Ensemble, and the Manhattan Chamber Players. Emi’s recordings for Arezzo Music, Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes with Ruckus (2019) and Amour Cruel (2017) were amongst the top ten albums on the Classical and World Music Billboard Charts and showcase Emi’s fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York City. 

A multi-instrumentalist, Allison Monroe has appeared with the Boston Camerata, Newberry Consort, Les Délices, Apollo’s Fire, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra playing violin, viola, vielle, and rebec. She is also a singer. Since earning her DMA in Historical Performance Practice from Case Western Reserve University, Allison particularly enjoys creating her own musical opportunities: as artistic director and performer for Fair and Princely Branches, as violinist and violist on an album of classical and early romantic duos, and as a founding member and co-director of Cleveland-based medieval ensemble, Trobár. Allison also directs CWRU’s Collegium Musicum and Baroque Orchestra.

A native New Yorker, violinist Shelby Yamin has earned distinction for her sparkling, vivacious performances. Equally adept as a modern and period violinist, Shelby was the winner of the Juilliard415 concerto competition and has been featured as a soloist with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco Academy Orchestra, the Tafelmusik Winter Institute, the Oregon Bach Festival, and Berwick Academy where she returned as guest concertmaster in 2019. Shelby was the first prize winner of the Berkeley Piano Club’s Barbara Fritz Chamber Music Competition and the first prize winner of the Virtuoso e Bel Canto competition in Lucca, Italy, where she was a recipient of the Luigi Boccherini Award. 

Cellist Rebecca Landell Reed’s “luminous” (Cleveland.com) and “notable” (New York Times) sound elicits a range of expression “from classically evocative to Hitchcock horrifying” (Washingtonian). Her solo appearances include performances with Apollo’s Fire, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Les Délices, Three Notch’d Road, and Batzdorfer Hofkapelle. Rebecca pursues a diverse professional career that includes performing and acting in Studio Theatre’s An Iliad, working with composer Eric Shimelonis on the NPR children’s show Circle Round, and developing educational programs with the Crumhorn Collective. She is currently on the faculty at Oberlin Conservatory where she teaches baroque cello and viola da gamba.