The lines separating earthly desire from holy rapture become blurry in this audio-only episode featuring music by Handel from Les Délices’ April program Starstruck featuring Hannah De Priest.

Guests Yiheng Yang, Aisslinn Nosky, Mark Edwards, and Shelby Yamin join SalonEra for music & conversation centering late-18th century female pianist-composers Marianne Mozart, Jane Mary Guest, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, and others.

Nicaragua’s awe-inspiring volcanoes and vast caldera lakes have inspired countless myths and legends. We focus on the Legend of the Masaya Lagoon in this audio-only episode featuring live performances from Les Délices’ February program La Diosa and excerpts from a new commission by Nicaraguan-American composer Gilda Lyons.

Guests Kim Gruenwald and Dominic Giardino consider the music and sounds that reverberated across the western frontier as French, English, new American settlers, and Native Americans pushed westward in the decades following the Revolutionary War.

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my! LD Artistic Director Debra Nagy and cellist Rebecca Landell share Baroque music inspired by the animal kingdom in this audio-only episode featuring recent live performances of music by Biber, Pasquini, and others.

Together with conductor Anthony Trecek-King and ethnomusicologist Gibb Schreffler, SalonEra probes the history and evolution of sea shanties and related work songs from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Featuring live concert recordings by Seán Dagher with Les Délices and more.

Czech music scholar Martin Nedbal explores how 18th century Bohemian composers subtly incorporated folk tunes and inflections of their homeland despite cultural suppression under Hapsburg rule in this audio-only episode featuring live performances from Les Délices’ October program Bohemian Rhapsody.

SalonEra considers the legacies of blind and visually-impaired historical composer-performers like Jacob van Eyck, Turlogh O’Carollan, and others and talks with vision-impaired harpsichordist & violinist Albano Berberi, lutenist Lucas Harris, and Braille music engraver Kathleen Cantrell.

LD Artistic Director Debra Nagy and host Hannah De Priest explore the strange and beautiful music of the ars subtilior in this audio-only episode featuring live performances from Les Délices’ November 2024 program 14th Century Avant-garde. Featuring music by Machaut, Senleches, and others with performances by Debra Nagy, (winds, voice, harps), Scott Metcalfe (vielle and Gothic harp) Sophie Michaux (mezzo-soprano) and James Reese (tenor).

Drawing inspiration from a range of non-Western musical traditions as well as historical events, SalonEra shines a light on artists doing fascinating work that centers cultural exchange. Setar virtuoso Kiya Tabassian (Constantinople), Indian-American soprano Vidita Kanniks, and Thai-American violinist Sallynee Amawat (Infusion Baroque) join us to share recent work that thoughtfully bridges traditions.