Musical Storytelling: A Full-Day Baroque Strings Workshop

Ages: 10 - 18
Session Length: 1 Day
Skill Level: Intermediate and Up

Join members of Les Délices, Cleveland’s premiere Baroque chamber ensemble, for a full-day workshop focused on Heinrich Biber's programmatic showpiece Battalia.

The full-day format will offer a stimulating, intensive, and rewarding experience in which each session explores a different aspect or element of the workshop’s Musical Storytelling theme. Along the way, participants will learn about Baroque style, bowing and technique while gaining essential chamber music experience as they learn and rehearse Biber’s Battalia without a conductor.

The day’s schedule will include a faculty performance that introduces concepts of rhetoric used by Baroque composers, group classes on characteristic styles and techniques, mini-lessons, and full-ensemble playing sessions that culminate in a public performance and reception for students and families.

Sunday, November 16, 2025
9:00 am - 4:30 pm
TMS University Circle Campus
11125 Magnolia Drive, Cleveland, OH 44106

Workshop Schedule

• 9:00 am - 9:45 am: Faculty performance introducing concepts of Musical Storytelling, Rhetoric, and Historical Performance Practice
• 10:00 am - 11:00 am: Full ensemble playing: Introducing Biber’s Battalia
• 11:15 am - 12:30 pm: Breakout Groups: Introducing fundamentals of Baroque String Playing; Upper strings: Characteristic bowings; Lower strings: What is continuo?
• 12:30 pm - 1:15 pm: Lunch Break (provide your own or purchase a bag lunch)
• 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm: Group Lessons
• 2:45 pm - 3:45 pm: Chamber orchestra (full group session) working on Biber's Battalia
• 4:00 pm - 4:30 pm: Short performance/presentation for parents/families + reception

Participating families will also receive up to four free tickets to Les Délices’ Noel, Noel concerts, presented December 5th - 7th.

Prerequisites

Participants must be able to play 2 octave melodic or harmonic minor scales; up to 2 or 3 flats/sharps, and have completed Suzuki Book 3. Completion of Suzuki Book 4 is preferred.

Contribution

The Music Settlement and Les Délices are committed to making this program accessible for all who wish to attend. If you do wish to make a contribution towards the cost of the program, suggested donations range from $25 - $150 per participant. All contributions will go directly toward the talented team who makes this program possible.

Registration

Advanced registration is required as there is limited capacity for this workshop. An attempt will be made to balance the ensemble across sections.

Please select your instrument below and complete your registration. Alternatively, to enroll by phone, please call The Music Settlement at 216-421-5806 ext. 100.

Violin Registration

Viola Registration

Cello Registration

Double Bass Registration

Register

Faculty

Les Délices

Les Délices (in English, The Delights) brings long-forgotten music alive for contemporary audiences through concerts in Cleveland, on tour, and through recordings and broadcasts. Dubbed “an early music group with an avant-garde appetite” by The New York Times, the San Francisco Cl... Expand

Les Délices (in English, The Delights) brings long-forgotten music alive for contemporary audiences through concerts in Cleveland, on tour, and through recordings and broadcasts. Dubbed “an early music group with an avant-garde appetite” by The New York Times, the San Francisco Classical Voice observed that “Les Délices can’t help but get one listening and thinking in fresh ways.” Recent projects have seen Les Délices bring their “outstanding artistry and verve” (American Record Guide) to signature programs of French Baroque music, folks songs from Baroque-era Scotland, chamber music from the Age of Revolutions, late-Medieval music, and more. Visit www.lesdelices.org to learn more.

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Featured Teachers

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• Violinist Shelby Yamin will lead project planning and work with upper strings. Equally adept on modern and baroque violin, Shelby has appeared as a soloist with Philharmonia Baroque Chamber Players, New York Baroque Incorporated, the San Francisco Academy Orchestra, Tafelmusik Winter Institute, and as guest concertmaster of the 2019 Berwick Academy of the Oregon Bach Festival. Also an active chamber musician, she regularly collaborates with a wide range of New York based ensembles and Cleveland's Les Délices.
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  Rebecca Landell is a professor of baroque cello and viola da gamba at Oberlin Conservatory. She enjoys a varied performing career as a soloist and chamber musician with groups like Apollo’s Fire and Les Délices, as well as collaborating with a variety of artists creating experimental programs.

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• Les Délices Artistic Director Debra Nagy will assist with program planning and instruction. 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 Apollo’s Fire, and others. Passionate about chamber music, Debra is the founder/director of Les Délices and was awarded a 2022 Cleveland Arts Prize (Mid-Career). She serves on the faculty of advanced-level early music summer programs including the American Bach Soloists Academy and Oregon Bach Festival’s Berwick Academy, teaches baroque oboe at New England Conservatory as part of the Pratt Early Music Residency, and is a Visiting Instructor at Case Western Reserve University & Cleveland Institute of Music.
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