Mon 3/13 @ 7:30PM
Cleveland chamber ensemble Les Delices created its biweekly online program SalonEra during the pandemic, but it’s proven so popular the series has continued. It offers the group a chance to dig into a particular aspect of music, presenting live and recorded performances, along with background information from performers and music experts.
This month’s Bach 52 will be hosted by tenor Nicholas Phan, who’ll pose the question “Is Bach’s music for everyone?”
“In the current cultural climate in which every tradition and piece of art by dead White men is being questioned for its validity, I find that I am often asking myself: is classical music really for everybody?” Phan says. “In a basic sense, I have always believed this to be true. On the other hand, as the classical music community examines all the racism, misogyny, and homophobia baked into a lot of this music and its institutions, it’s hard not to recognize the ways that the traditions can exclude. Yet, as a gay man of color who has spent much of his life on the outside looking in, classical music is the thing that kept me alive through my fraught adolescence and through which I have found community.”
Phan, Les Delices artistic director Debra Nagy, and others will address the social history of Bach’s music, along with what it meant for them personally.
Go here to get tickets.
lesdelices.org/events/category/salonera/