The Fairmont Chamber Music Society will be concluding its 2024-25 season on Sunday, May 5 with the early music of “Les Delices.”
The concert is scheduled at St. Peter the Fisherman Church, 407 Jackson Street, Fairmont at 3:00 p.m. Featured artists for the concert are Debra Nagy, baroque oboist and harpsichordist Mark Edwards. Debra Nagy is praised for her “dazzling technique and soulful expressiveness,”
Debra Nagy is one of North America’s leading performers on the baroque oboe. She is principal oboe with Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society and performs with ensembles around the country including the American Bach Soloists, Apollo’s Fire, Boston Early Music Festival, and others. Passionate about chamber music, Debra is the founder/director of Les Délices and also performs late-medieval music as a regular guest with Boston’s acclaimed Blue Heron and Chicago’s Newberry Consort.
Debra was recently recognized with a 2022 Cleveland Arts Prize (Mid-Career) and received the 2022 Laurette Goldberg Prize from Early Music America for her community outreach work with Les Délices on the acclaimed web series SalonEra.
Additional awards recognizing her creative and scholarly pursuits include first-prize in the American Bach Soloists Young Artists Competition, a 2009 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a 2010 Creative Workforce Fellowship from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. Debra’s passion for unearthing little-known masterpieces caused the New York Times to dub “Les Délices “an early music group with an avant-garde appetite,” adding, “concerts and CDs by Les Délices are journeys of discovery.”
Inspired by a creative process that brings together research, composition in historical styles, improvisation, and artistic collaboration, Debra creates programs that “can’t help but getting one listening and thinking in fresh ways” (San Francisco Classiacal Voice). Recent projects have included critically-acclaimed multimedia productions of Machaut’s Remede de Fortune, an acclaimed CD combining jazz and French Baroque airs called Songs without Words, and The White Cat, a pastiche Baroque opera with puppetry and projections based on Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy’s 1690s feminist fairytale. Recent social unrest and the restrictions of the COVID-19 Pandemic inspired several new projects. Debra reimagined Les Délices’ traditional concert series for the virtual space, safely recording 11 different programs for broadcast during their 2020-22 seasons.
One reviewer described the first program as, “in a word: sensational!” and another recognized “[Les Délices] raises the bar for streaming events that have fairly taken over since the pandemic halted live performing arts. A dedicated and inspiring teacher, Debra serves on the artist faculties of the American Bach Soloists’ Summer Academy and the Oregon Bach Festival’s Berwick Academy, and has given masterclasses at Juilliard, the Cleveland Institute of Music, San Francisco Conservatory, Cincinnati Conservatory, and University of Washington. She is also committed to service and to fostering the next generation of leaders through her work as a mentor and as a former board member of Early Music America; she helped found what has become EMA’s Emerging Leadership Council.
Debra has recorded over 40 CDs with repertoire ranging from 1300-1800 and has had live performances featured on CBC Radio Canada, Klara (Belgium), NPR’s Performance Today, WQXR, and WGBH. Mark Edwards is a Canadian harpsichordist and organist from Toronto, Ontario and is the firstprize winner of the 2012 Musica Antiqua Bruges International Harpsichord Competition and is Assistant Professor of Harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Mark Edwards studied piano and organ at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan with Thomas Lymenstull and Thomas Bara and continued his organ studies with David Higgs at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he also followed courses in organ improvisation and harpsichord with renowned historical keyboards specialist, William Porter. He was organist at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Rochester and played continuo at the Eastman School with Paul O’Dette and Christel Thielmann.
He graduated as a Bachelor of Music with highest distinction. He completed his further studies with William Porter (organ and improvisation) and Hank Knox (harpsichord) at the Schulich School of Music and the Department of Early Music at McGill University, where in 2011 he obtained Master in organ and harpsichord. He attended master classes with Ton Koopman, Pierre Hantaï, Skip Sempé, Kenneth Weiss, Harald Vogel and Jacques Oortmerssen. In 2012 he continued his studies with Robert Hill at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Germany.
His harpsichord playing has been described as “bringing the listener to new and unpredictable regions, using all of the resources of his instrument, of his virtuosity, and of his imagination.”.”In addition to his prize at the Bruges competition, Mark won third prize at the 2012 Jurow International Harpsichord Competition,[4] and second prize in the 2011 Concours d’Orgue de Québec. He is also a founding member of Ensemble 1729.[6] He has appeared on American Public Media’s radio program Pipedreams,[7] as well as on La Société Radio-Canada’s program Soirées classiques. The concert is open to the public at St. Peter the Fisherman Church, which is ADA compliant.
Tickets are $10.00 for adults and $6.00 for seniors and students and may be purchased at the door by cash, check or credit card. Season ticket subscriptions for the 2024-25 new season will also be available for purchase at the door. The Fairmont Chamber Music Society acknowledges support from its subscribers, the grant monies received through the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the WV Commission on the Arts, along with financial assistance from the City of Fairmont, the Town of Whitehall, and the Marion County Commission.
The Society further acknowledges the support from FirstEnergy and United Hospital Foundations and the Marion County Board of Education for allowing on-site school concerts for the students of Marion County. For further information about the Fairmont Chamber Music Society, visit www.fairmontchambermusic.org or call 304-366-1768